Home brewery BeerMachine: greet the summer with a beer keg!

For those who have already tasted the home-brewed beer and those who are going to do so, we present the Beer Machine. This is the second stage of the refresher after MrBeer. You could say the blue “kyu” belt on the way to the status of “master” and black dan.

The Beer Machine is a beer machine: it looks more substantial and sleeker than its fellow “Mr. Beer. They say that this “representative” model is very popular with the population, because it harmoniously combines beauty, ergonomics and ease of use.

So let’s start brewing beer. We proceed according to the established scheme: we reconstitute ready brewing wort from concentrate, add yeast and conduct fermentation in the BeerMachine brewery. The whole process is done without overflowing and the ready beer is ready in exactly two weeks, as the manufacturer promises in the manual. Well, let’s check it out.

Diary of a temporary non-drinking host

Day 1. A real man’s appliance in the kitchen

Well, we’re home!. Opening the box. The BeerMachine Deluxe 2008 is a complete brewery.

The package weighs 12 kilograms and contains inside a plastic container, as it should be – with a lid in it – a black tube and a tap for draining the wort, as well as beautiful ceramic bottles with a sticker “retro”, instructions – printed and on DVD + other useful gizmos.

Day 2. Prefabricated home brewery

There’s no hurry. Let’s get the brewery up and running. The beer keg itself consists of two roughly equal sized halves, with a silicone seal inserted between them. To ensure the tightness of the container, we put clamps in special grooves on the keg. We let the construction to stand.

Day 3. Brewing wort

To choose a brew, you need to decide on the type of dry wort and the type of yeast. We decided not to be cunning, and preferred all kinds of exotic sorts of beer to the well-known Pilsner.

We dilute wort from the bag in three liters of heated bottled water “Rodnik” in an enameled saucepan and pour our half-finished product into the brewery.

We add more water – to reach the necessary volume of 10 liters – and the yeast is added to the ready wort.

Home brewery on a shelf. reading on the thermometer: 26°C.

To control the main fermentation process, as well as beer prematuration, a pressure gauge is installed in the brewery’s casing.

Day 4-7. Nothing stands still – except the brewery

On the second day after the start of fermentation the gauge needle moved to 5 PSI – the process has begun. The yeast has activated and begins to produce CO2, converting the sugars in the wort into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

On the third day the brewery valve starts to bleed off excess CO2, normalizing the pressure inside the tank. You could have guessed it from the quiet hiss.

In the course of malting beer can be additionally saturated with carbon dioxide with the help of a special, mentioned above “block” and spigots supplied with all the malt blends. This is called “carbonation”.

Day 8-13. The product – to the cold

The pressure gauge shows 12 PSI, but the gas is no longer vented through the valve. If you drop water on the valve – no bubbles. And before, the water was bubbling with escaping carbon dioxide. So, it’s time to put the brewery in the fridge.

Day 14-16. It’s time to take the sample

We thought we’d try it and see how it turned out. We pressed the tap and the process went on, it poured!. Not a lot of foam yet, the smell and taste are beer-like, but you can feel that the drink has not yet reached the stage of finality. So it’s too early to drink and enjoy the results. We need to let the beer stand in the cold for a while longer. Well, let’s wait.

Day 17-18. The second attempt was a success! The guests are happy

So, 14 days have passed since we started brewing beer. Now the foam in a cup is about 1 cm, the smell is as it should be, heady, soft and pleasant. The classic taste of light beer is dense and rich, with a slight bitterness. So, it all worked out!

Let’s call our guests in for a tasting! As an option we pour the beer into ceramic bottles and… ourselves .

Our friends appreciated our efforts – the beer was pouring like a river, everybody was asking for more. That’s how easy it was to feel like a hereditary Czech brewer, a descendant of a great dynasty.

Day 19. If you’re drunk, at least clean up after yourself

It was much easier and faster to disassemble the brewery than to assemble it. To get ready for further use, we rinse all parts of the device under running water, then we submerge all small parts in a large container any large saucepan will do and add water &frac14 Chlorine disinfectant tablets from the kit, see that everything dissolves.

If you think that “&frac14 ” – this is a typo, don’t believe it: we actually broke the tablet into 4 pieces, all according to the instructions. We leave it for about 15 minutes and then we rinse it out again very carefully. We put all brewery parts on the terry towel or linen cloth, let water run off and dry, then put it away in a box.

For the tip: conclusions and general impressions

1 Compared to MrBeer, the BeerMachine assembly process is more complicated, but the brewery also looks more solid than a plastic flask. It’s worth giving as a gift to a good man, and you would not be ashamed to have guests yourself.

2 The undoubted advantage of the BeerMachine is its cool appearance, like in a real bar! Even my wife agrees that the brewery is a real decoration of the kitchen – just like its owner when sober, though .

3 The beer was excellent: tasty, fragrant, unfiltered, sufficiently “full-bodied”. And the main thing is that it is alive! No preservatives or stabilizers. Totally natural. Which means it’s a healthy product.

4 It was a pleasure to be engaged in creative work and at the same time – a real man’s business, to please myself and my family, and to make sure that “not only Czechs and Germans are engaged in brewing beer” – the ordinary American man is quite capable of this process too.