Beautiful design, lots of picts and info here:
What’s the point except to be another toy for the person who has everything? If you know nothing about the ingredients or process, you are not going to be making your own recipes or doing anything worthwhile. Just buy commercial beer instead of paying 5k + on a malt extract system advertised by the Lexus voice-over commercial guy…
I only briefly looked at the site, but $5k+ !?!??!! You can get a Sabco system plus ALL of the extra widgets for that price.
Huh, Kiwis… go figure.
I thought it was a SNL skit at first.
Oh, the price is in NZ dollars. So it’s only $4500. :
Snazzy looking contraption, but like anything new out on the market, I would like to see some consumer reports before I spent that kind of money, even if I was in the market for a mini brewery.
Thanks for posting tony.
Stan Hieronymus on Twitter: “silly $4,500 Personal Brewery”.
Snazzy? Yeah. For me? No.
+1 on the Sabco Brew Magic. Money WAY better spent…
A cool concept but what’s the point?
You’re giving up all control over the brewing process to their ‘kits’ for making each beer. For that price, I’d rather go get all the stuff I need for a new 20-gallon system or perhaps a conical fermenter or three. 
Also, did anyone look over their list of the 12 things wrong with homebrewing? What a joke! They assume NO homebrewer has the ability, in any way, to control/maintain the temp of their fermenters.
They also assume we’re all extract brewers who use ‘old’ extract and that we all spend hours bottling our beer. lol Further, they assume we are incapable of rackign our beer w/o horribly oxidizing it and that we all use ‘old’ yeast. lol
Their list:
- Flat beer has to be carbonated after fermentation in an extra process step in bottles (4 weeks) or kegs (1 week).
- Fermentation occurs at ambient temperatures so gets cold at night & in winter and can takes weeks to complete.
- Clarification can take weeks.
- Beer must be transferred off the sediment which oxidises the product greatly and creates off-flavours.
- Too much work. Multiple vessels and transfers required. Bottling homebrew takes many hours.
- Experience is required to make a good beer. Trial and error.
- Poor temperature control during fermentation leads to yeast making off-flavours or headache-causing compounds.
- Poor cleaning and poor sterilisation which leads to many infected beers.
- Chronic beer oxidation due to transfers between vessels and into bottles and kegs.
- Bottled homebrew has a dead yeast layer at the bottom which contributes off-flavours.
- Old extract is been kept warm for many months on the shelf, which contributes greatly to the homebrew flavour.
- Old yeast is stored warm under the can lid which ensures a huge loss of vitality and viability, resulting in more homebrew flavours.
Ha. Well, I’m pretty sure this isn’t aimed at the homebrewer with ability… it is clearly marketed at the “more money than sense” crowd.
Basically a stainless mr beer, but…
The other route for people with more money than sense
New Stainless Pot $100
More Beer Conical Heated/Cooled $1795 (with no options)
New Mini Fridge $300
Temp controller for fridge $75
New 1/6th bbl keg $120
Faucet $35
I guess the williamswarn is still another $1100ish; that might be charging a bit too much for snazzy looks and fancy name. If it were sold for about $3000 I’d call it a bargain and actually recommend it to certain folks.
Quite true, I’m sure. I just found it amusing. 
It would still be homebrew I guess, only without the fun.
Maybe more of a bargain at $3000 (though not to me)… but it still would be mainly for someone who has a lot of extra dough to spend, with no interest in the process (or at least not wanting to bother), and who in the end just wants something that tastes like beer.
At that point, it’s probably just more worthwhile to buy some of the better commercially made beers and just enjoy.
I’d be really curious to know how many of these things they actually manage to sell. Bread machines are fairly cheap but make fairly mediocre bread…so considering what this contraption is selling for, all I can say is it had better make some outrageously good beer.
Personally, I would never want/own a bread machine or this contraption. However, for those burdened with money being able to say “I brewed this” without doing any work- this thing is perfect. The point is, rather than making outrageously good beer, it doesn’t (I’m guessing) make outrageously horrible beer. The fact that it pasteurizes the fermenter/brewing water and then maintains fermentation temperature is a huge plus. IMO this is no worse than buying jetskis when you live 300 miles from the nearest body of water. Yeah, I’m curious to know how many they sell as well.
i could put up a new garage, half built with a refrigeration room and think of all the wonderful barley that would be
Damn. To think I just bought a freezer. 8)
I think it’s neat. Not for me but pretty nifty.
Mr. Beer with heating and cooling.
It doesn’t appear that you could do much other than the pre-hopped extract kits that they offer. If they don’t make your style, you’re out of luck.
I kept waiting for the punchline. I couldn’t help but think they were going to go with “We will serve no beer before its time, assuming that it’s time is 7 days.”.
I wonder what shipping to the states would be?
Paul
They have that covered - “just add 23 liters of your own wort.” I’m waiting for the first post from someone who bought one of these, made the extract kit twice and is now wondering which $4k brewing system they should buy so they can make EG brews. You laugh now but when you see that post just remember that you read it here first. ;D
I know I’m weak, but I think this is seriously cool. Well it would be except it’ll probably make crappy beer, but it’s got my creative juices flowing. I was wondering about the dispensing, though. Did you see that it uses SodaStream CO2 bottles? The largest is 33oz. I would think you’d go through more than one per batch; serious drawback for our money-laden consumer who buys this contraption.