PicoBrew, Brewie, Mini Brew, EZ Brew, WilliamsWarn, Hopii and Hopsy. Now taking a cue from Last Week Tonight, if I told you that one of those home brew system names was fake, would you be certain you knew which one? Or that one isn’t even a home brew appliance at all?
Reading through a recent NPR article about the rise of beer gadgets had my head spinning at the amount of choices for a really unproven niche.
And what spins my head a few more revolutions is the fact that there is so much beer out there on shelves, ready-to-go that you would probably have to forgo since these beer machines are not on the cheap side. Now, maybe that is for the better. You would expect a high price to create high quality. But the costs, to me, outweigh, the endeavor. The appeal of brewing at home is to create something that is yours, something you can’t get on store shelves. Or you are doing it to master the art and science of the process. These machines are basically producing a simulacrum of an available beer.
Especially when you are tied to ingredient packs to make your beer. Those packs are obviously where the margins lie for profit and for branding opportunities with breweries but when I look at these machines, I see those K-Cup coffee makers that have had more press about their recycling downside than how great the coffee is.
If I were selling these, I would hit up each and every brewery operating. That is where you can sell for that price as an R&D product for those brewers with little time left over in a day.
By the way, Hopsy is not a home brew system and EZ Brew is my own word invention.