Thanks! The main thing that makes me want a Zymatic is there are many times when I want to brew but I don’t have time. I think I generally would have time to mill grains and load a Zymatic and I think I could come back 4 hours later and cool the wort. But in between I could be at kids soccer game or some such.
But, it’s expensive and I am very cheap. So, who knows if I will ever pull the trigger.
Yes, this the thing I didn’t praise enough about this machine is that it is so programmable. You basically write a simple code that allows you flexibility to basically start and end a brewday based on your schedule. Aside from clean up, and prep, there’s almost nothing you need to do for the several hours it takes to brew. I have been out to lunch or running errands and I can use my phone to check the progress of my batch.
If I were to get one of these for a home I would figure out a way to include it “tucked away like a microwave” with my other kitchen appliances.
For me, my Zymatic has really reinvigorated my brewing. After homebrewing for 6 years or so, I had started to get burned out and wasn’t brewing as often. My system had become more and more complicated over the years and it became kind of a drag to get out all the equipment, set it all up and brew. I couldn’t brew indoors with my propane fired setup, and winters are cold here in Iowa. Finding the time was also an issue as I had to be near by through the whole process.
Now I can brew indoors on a very compact and easy to setup system that I don’t have to babysit. The repeatability and step mashing options really let me be as creative as I want with recipes and process. The real fun for me now is crafting recipes and trying new things to see what differences they create. Time is much less of an issue now since I can get a lot of other things done while I brew.
Price is a relative thing, so whether it’s worth it to you or not is the question. Personally, I think the amount of work that went into the design and the support they provide (the have responsive tech support available even on weekends) makes it worth the cost. I know many home brewers who have spent way more than $2K on their brewing systems, and I probably had at least half that just in the upgrades I had bought over the years. The nice thing was I was able to sell off a lot of my old gear to recoup some of the cost. Win-win as other homebrewers got nice gear pretty cheap from me.
Perhaps not a giant difference to others but I almost always do 3.5 gallon batches on my Zymatic. That puts the upper bound of the OG I can get out of it at ~1.055 but that I typically prefer lower than that anyways. I certainly need to brew way more often on my Z vs my 10 gallon setup but I’m finding I far prefer that. For the rate my beers get drank from my 3 taps it keeps the taps turning over at a rate I like. With so little time and volume invested I’ve also been far more willing to try beers and styles that I may not have done before.
