Personal Craft Beer Brewing Machine

Product Description

Features

• Brews 5 liters of beer at a time - the equivalent of 13 12-ounce bottles
• Fine-tune the ABV (alcohol content) and ibu (bitterness level) of any PicoPak to your liking, or create a custom PicoPak with your own recipe of grains, hops, and yeast.
• Designed for home brewing elites, the Pico Pro comes with two 6. 6 liter (1. 75 gallon) ball-lock kegs, easy to connect to your kegerator or the included CO2-powered party tap
• Professional Co2 force-carbonation system so you can enjoy your finished beer faster
• Built-in steam cleaning and dishwasher-safe components make clean-up simple

Top Reviews

Caveat Emptor !!!!
by Bill (3 out of 5 stars)
May 21, 2018

Let me begin by stating that I am a homebrewer with over 30 years of experience and many medal-winning beers. I bought this system a week ago to make pilot batches, because the write-up on Amazon said I could make my own recipes with it. THAT IS A VERY MISLEADING STATEMENT. I can design my own batches, but I have to then buy my packaged recipe from Picobrew. There appears to be no way for me to put my own ingredients into my recipe on the Picobrew. You would think the Picobrew folks would anticipate this and make DIY packaging for folks like me, so I could just buy the empty box thing and put my own ingredients in it and plug it into the system. I have scoured the website for info to accomplish this, and have been unsuccessful. Now, as for its ability to brew a brand-name craft beer at a bit less than supermarket prices, it does that just fine. But if you are an advanced brewer, don't waste your time or money on this. Let me add that if I am wrong and there is a way to use my own ingredients to make a beer on this device, I will amend my review and increase my rating.
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So Easy
by Thomas Alvord (5 out of 5 stars)
March 12, 2018

PicoBrew PICO Model C Beer Brewing Appliance, Black

For years I've wanted to brew my own beer. I stopped at many beer and wine supply stores. It was always the same, so much hardware, pots and pans, cooling coils, hydrometers, and so on. I live in 800 sq. ft, that won't work.

I saw an ad for Pico C and was interested, I went on Amazon December 4, 2017 and purchased my Pico C. Wow, I had it the next day. The system arrived in first class condition, well packed. The unit is just over 12" wide and 16" high and fits on the kitchen counter when I brew a batch of beer. The rest of the time I store it in a closet. The brew keg and serving keg are well made and I store them in the original boxes when not in use. I ordered the 5 one liter bottle kit and like being able to take one or two with me.

The manual is online and I put it on my phone in I-Books and it is there when I need it. The brewing unit is wifi enabled and you can watch the mash and hop process on line. You can also see what other owners are brewing and where they are in the world.

I drink my share of craft beer and the first 3 brews, Christmas Duck Porter, Atomic Amber Ale, and Irish Dry Stout were dead on. I use natural carbonation. All of my family and friends agreed the brews were as good as the craft breweries.
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The Advanced Starter Kit for Homebrewing
by James Martineau (5 out of 5 stars)
March 9, 2018

I purchased the PICO C just before Christmas last year and I've been very impressed with it to date. I'd been wanting to get into making beer for many years and this to me was a nice foray into that world. I realize you could get started brewing for much less money, but I view this as the "Advanced Starting Kit". At 50 and just sending my last one off to college. I may be in a different spot than some others looking at this, but if you're drinking quality beer at your local brewery, you're spending a lot of money anyway.

As for the PicoC itself, lots of things are done for you, but there is still enough you can tweak and modify (mess up too) that made it a good place to start for me. Clean-up is a cinch, but I must admit having the bonus of the sous vide is worth its weight in gold, especially after almost purchasing one for Christmas. I do highly recommend after using the serving keg, consider buying a second or some bottles. I decided to purchase bottles (0.5 and 1 liter) so I can keep going without having to buy another serving keg (there not my favorite to clean anyway).

One thing I would say where they could improve is in some of the instructions (I looked at the PicoS online videos since many of them are applicable). Specifically, I'd love to see a high-level overview for each beer from a brewery. For example, when brewing a BiBock (lager), I was essentially flying blind until reaching out to the support team. They quickly helped resolve that issue with the basic instructions on fermentation time and lagering time.

Overall, I'd heard support was a little bit of an issue for some, but they've been great with me. First time was with fixing a delivery issue (no yeast included with the PicoPak), and the second time was with the aforementioned "lager instructions". Very pleased with the overall experience.
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Fun process from start to finish and the Beers are fantastic!
by Max C. (5 out of 5 stars)
March 7, 2018

I am now on my third batch of beer with the PicoBrew C and loving every part of the process (ok, maybe I'm enjoying the drinking part more than the other parts, but its all fun).

The manual is very clear but the videos they have online worked even better for getting me up and running. Setup was very simple and once you explore the different parts that come in the box it all starts to make sense how it works and what the different parts are for.

My first session was the Stargazer IPA from Rooftop brewing in Seattle. If anything the process was too simple; I followed the instructions for loading the Pikopak and water and then hit the button to start. The PicoBrew started making noises and humming and told me it would be done in less than 3 hours. I was a little disappointed that it wasn't really telling me what it was doing. So I wandered off to login online and see what information showed there. What a pleasant surprise! There is a graph of temperatures and a better description of what part of the process the Pico is running through at the time. The process concludes with the beer pumped into a cute little keg ready for fermentation. You let it sit until room temp (24 hours) and then add the yeast. The keg then sits in a warm room for a week or two depending on the recipe to magically generate alcohol. At this point you use the PicoBrew to pump the beer into this cute little 5L dispensing keg and then add sugar. Once the keg has sat for a couple weeks it becomes carbonated and is ready to drink. At this point I ran into my only real challenge...

I came home on a Friday and was excited to crack into my first beer. Just before I opened it I though "wait a second; wont it start to go flat once I open it?". I wasn't sure I was ready to commit to roughly 13 bottles worth of 7.0 ABV in one weekend. I was able to solve this problem by calling a couple of friends and we were able to power through most of it while I showed them how to brew my next batch.

Like I said; lots of fun through the whole process.
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Beware
by Double D (1 out of 5 stars)
February 4, 2019

First time using it what a joke. Put a picopak in the machine did exactly what the directions said and wants it started brewing walked away and came back 40 min later to a huge mess! It leaked everywhere from the bottom. Cool product if it worked right so wasted 28.00 on a picopak and had to return the unit.
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Junk (For now) EDITED up two stars.
by Austin Kimball (3 out of 5 stars)
October 8, 2019

First of all, let me say that the device is easy to set up, register, and brew with. I waited around a week to get the device. Realized it did not come with a picopak, had to order one from WA, so took 8 days (yes, 8 days! And I paid 9 dollars for shipping!) which sucked as I was excited to try this thing. Even bought a dedicated table and some shelving for the dining room for it. Then needed to get sanitizer, distilled water...etc. Finally, after long anticipating, brew day was here. Cleaned everything, set it all up, followed the online instructions, went to do first rinse...error code 18 (rotary pump seized). Ok...what does that mean? Apparently in order to circulate wort, drain the reservoir you need that pump. Otherwise water only flows one way...no bueno. Tried a few more times following troubleshooting steps. Took three times to finally pass a high torque test. Passed multiple times ( I think I did it 4 times just to be sure). No error codes. Cool, popped in the picopak to finally brew! Takes around 2 and a half hours, according to the (rather awesome) brew house app/ pico brew.com monitoring. Nice. At some point during 55-30 minutes left of the brewing process during adjunct 2 boil, it had seized again throwing all the wort into the brewing keg to be trapped forever. Who knows how long that was, as the website continues to show the countdown as nothing went wrong, even though clearly the brew locally has ended. Entire 2 hours and a 30 something dollar picopak, 650+ dollars invested, time waiting and setting everything up just right, to literally throw everything down the drain and be left with a feeling of pure rage. I am requesting a replacement and I will try one more time, as tech support even through email was very responsive, so there's that. I will give maybe 2 stars more if second device works through a few brews. Otherwise, perhaps try the beerdroid over this. Cheaper and has no pumps to go bad, as well as PET kegs that fit into their proprietary kegerator with dispenser that doesn't require co2...........

EDIT: Return came the same week. Super fast. Second appliance had two error codes, one right after the next. My head almost exploded. Looked up support steps from PicoBrew, fixed both of them easily. Errors made sense; both pumps needed to be primed as they do not have water in them when it first arrives. Took me about 20 minutes to prime the pumps using the troubleshooting. This whole process is not what you want to deal with the first time you use a 599.00 device, but overall the new device is working flawlessly. Would highly recommend, however only if you purchase directly through PicoBrew. Apparently they have upgraded a lot of internal components that may resolve some or all of the issues I had. Happy brewing! Cheers!
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I've really enjoyed my experience with the Pico C so far
by SG (5 out of 5 stars)
March 18, 2018

I've really enjoyed my experience with the Pico C so far. Over the past year as a New Englander, getting into craft beer has been a great weekend hobby visiting Maine Vermont and touring my native Massachusetts. When my wife got me the Pico C for the holiday I was thrilled. It took the scare out of what would have to go into using the traditional equipment to make beer, not to mention the space constraints. The first brew I did was a free style which means I picked my own ingredients and just wanted to be creative. The brew process was a breeze. The pdf manual is great and the on screen instructions are easy to follow. It's really foolproof. The result was great but unexpected. I got something that resulted a Sam's Winter but an IPA version with a ton of hops. I used natural carbonation to do it and it was very easy. My next brew is a West Coast IPA which I brewed this evening. Again simple process and you can also tweak the recipe to adjust abv and ibv. that's a cool feature. In both brew experiences, I did it while entertaining and it was a big hit. You can really get people interested in the process and your house smells great in the process. Just play some board games eat some pizza and have some craft brew while this goes. I've also invested into the system. I bought the forced carbonation kit for it and also the Picoferm to properly monitor fermination. In short, I love this thing and I am excited to see the Pico Pak list continue to grow
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Nice machine makes brewing all grain easy.
by chuck (5 out of 5 stars)
August 27, 2018

Web site a little clugy but the machine seems to work well waiting for my first brew to finish so i have my fingers crossed but the wort smells great.
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Good starting place for home brewers but need more options for creating "own brew."
by Ashley Matthews (4 out of 5 stars)
May 28, 2018

Bought this as a gift for my husband for our anniversary. He is big into craft beer and had been considering making his own. He appreciates the ease of it and the first brew went well and the beer was pretty good, at least according to him. The second brew is fermenting now. Biggest downside we see is a lack of real creativity for making brews that are really your own. They have some options, but they are ultimately pretty minimal. We are hoping they make changes in that direction soon.
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Disappointed
by jord h jordan (1 out of 5 stars)
December 31, 2018

I would have gave it 5 but I am missing important parts to the machine. I found the magnet that goes on the bottom of the step filter but had to tape it to where it should have been. Also I am missing the step filter lid.

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