BeerBorg

teutonic terror wrote:Didn't Mr Beer, which most of us started with, promise drinkable beer within 14 days?

Most of us found out differently, but since going all grain, I can have drinkable beer, with
forced carbonation, within 10 days...

Yeah, but they provided about 20% of the yeast required to make this actually happen, and people telling newbies to ferment at cooler temperatures makes this worse, since they provided a real-ale yeast that was much happier at 66-68 degrees and throws off acetaldehyde like mad at lower temperatures even without the under pitch.

What I have been noticing lately, the trend of new brewers. High tech and fast. All in one systems, tilt hydros, forced carb and grain to glass in a little over a week, all monitored on a smart phone. I am pretty sure they are making good beer this way, but money doesn't seem to be a object. I think this BEERMKR would be a hot selling item after looking into it more and if it can do what says. Not what I would want but can see the market for it.

FWIW, I talked with these folks at GABF, gave the units they had a once-over, and (I think) sampled some beer that was alleged to have been made in it. Pretty fun unit, and I hope it works well for those who try it. Steps and procedure weren't all that different than what I do with the turkey fryer electric BIAB but on a much smaller scale with much less interaction and much more automation. There's some good news and bad news to that, as laid out in this thread, but I still was intrigued by it.

This morning, we got a BEERMKR update in great detail. In summary, due to the complexity of the system, any small change resulted in several other changes that created more and more delays. They believe they are now at a point to begin production.

They targeted spring of 2019, then delayed to summer of 2019 and now Oct 2019 for delivery. Given all the unknowns about a project of this nature, I would not be shocked if there is another delay.

Disappointing yes, but I'd rather wait to take delivery on a unit that has all kinks worked out.

brewnewb wrote:This morning, we got a BEERMKR update in great detail. In summary, due to the complexity of the system, any small change resulted in several other changes that created more and more delays. They believe they are now at a point to begin production.

Similar situation to a cycling kickstarter I funded for a company that already has well regarded real products on the market. It's the nature of the beast when it comes to R&D stuff with tight design tolerances.

mashani wrote:
FWIW, I can tell you the mechanism it uses to make beer (heating to 150 with a step mash, no actual boil) makes beer just fine, I've done it I think 4 or 5 times now (lost track) in my Mash & Boil and it's make good beer every time. Since they will be using steam hops it will be easier for them to do more if not any style this way where I have limitations when using normal hops.

I know if you're doing extract brewing, this is true, you really only need the boil for the hops/bitterness, so if you get IBU's in a different way, no boil needed. But I thought if you mashed grain, you boiled to get the DMS (DSM? - corn flavor) out? I make/made beer with extract routinely with only 5 minute boils for the light/balanced hops bitterness I prefer.

Monty

monsteroyd wrote:

mashani wrote:
FWIW, I can tell you the mechanism it uses to make beer (heating to 150 with a step mash, no actual boil) makes beer just fine, I've done it I think 4 or 5 times now (lost track) in my Mash & Boil and it's make good beer every time. Since they will be using steam hops it will be easier for them to do more if not any style this way where I have limitations when using normal hops.

I know if you're doing extract brewing, this is true, you really only need the boil for the hops/bitterness, so if you get IBU's in a different way, no boil needed. But I thought if you mashed grain, you boiled to get the DMS (DSM? - corn flavor) out? I make/made beer with extract routinely with only 5 minute boils for the light/balanced hops bitterness I prefer.

Monty

Hey, you haven't been around. Look through some of my posts. I think since you went missing, I got my Mash & Boil and started doing exclusively AG again.

But basically being me and always trying weird things, I discovered reading Nordic Farmhouse brewing blogs that some of those brewers made AG beer without ever boiling. I saw that this BEERMRK thing also didn't boil (and it's AG).

So I did an experiment where I just mashed @150 and then let (a lot) of hops steep in there @150 for a couple of hours to get stuff out of the hops and make sure it was pasteurized, and then slow chilled it. It turned out awesome. I've done this at least 3 maybe 4 times now I don't remember. I'm going to do it again soon for a Saison I think.

The important thing is don't get it above 160 (staying @150 is best). The DMS precursors do not form rapidly until it gets > 160... And their formation increases exponentially as temperatures rise from there. If you keep it at 150 any tiny amount that forms is easily blown off by the fermentation. Note that I used pilsner malt as my base malt in a couple of these batches (as do the Nordic farmhouse brewers). No DMS in the final product.

The other important thing is to figure hop utilization @150 is you have to go with ~5% of what you would get in a 1 hour boil per hour of contact. So to get a lot of IBUs you have to use a hella lot of hops, and/or hold temps @150 for many hours and/or both. So I've done this with beers where I didn't want a huge # of IBUs with smaller amounts of very high AA dual purpose hops with the right kind of flavor profile, OR using a metric shit ton (as my kids would say) of hops to make a Session IPA which turned out totally great.

The Nordic brewers often boil hops in a small amount of water to make a hop tea and then just add the tea to their non boiled beers.

To avoid the ways I described using hops above, the BEERMKR is going to use a kind of pre-isomerized hops called "Steam Hops" which you can get but they are kind of expensive. They are processed in such a way that the already isomerized AAUs are more easily extracted with little contact time.

Anyways, you can find more about this in some of my posts or ask me ?'s...

Thanks for the explanation. I didn't know that the DMS is formed over 160. Interesting

Monty

Bringing this back from the dead just because and for anyone interested in nerdy gadgets.

I've been getting FB adds for this thing, I guess it's real now.

mashani wrote:I've been getting FB adds for this thing, I guess it's real now.

I just checked and they're selling them. $579 for the beermkr, beer tap and one kit. Looks like additional kits are sold in 6 packs for $89. I didn't see an option to buy individual kits.