A new automated brewing system is taking the guess work out of making beer, putting the power in the hands of the brewer. Callum Fitzpatrick reports.

It always pays to offer a point of difference to your clients, whether that be a service or a product that nobody else is offering. For those venturing into the hospitality sector, the solution may lie in the answer to many of life’s problems.

Beer.

Cargo, a Northern Ireland-based group of designers and developers has introduced Brewbot, a fully automated brewing kit that will inevitably be a big hit for home brewers, but is just as appealing for many facets of the hospitality sector.

By fusing smart technology with high quality brewing equipment, Cargo is aiming to bring consistency to the brewing process for users and opening the pastime up to anybody who wants to create 20L of their own delicious craft beer.

Although it can be incredibly fun, home brewing can also be one of the most frustrating hobbies in the world – it often takes a couple of infected batches and at least one explosion to start becoming fully confident with your brewing process.

You have to make sure you follow your recipe meticulously, ensuring you have the correct balance of fermentable and unfermentable sugars and you achieve a temperature that’s high enough to pitch the wort, but quickly cool enough for quality fermentation. Even if you get all this right, it won’t make a difference if you forget to sanitise your mixing spoon – your whole batch might have been infected before you even started, you’re just yet to realise it.

The team behind Brewbot says that their device frees experienced brewers up to focus more intently on their recipes and it takes the fear factor away for new brewers as it guides them through the process from beginning to end.

“When we embarked on our journey into the world of brewing, we made many costly mistakes. We found it could be laborious and time consuming – we were spending more time looking at timers and thermometers or fixing our setup than thinking about recipes and ingredients,” a Brewbot spokesperson says.

“Eventually, with a lot of work we were able to brew amazing beers, but they were often difficult to replicate. We saw an opportunity as designers and developers to use our skills to build a better way to brew and ultimately open brewing up to everyone.”

HOW IT WORKS
The Brewbot process is surprisingly simple. After buying malt, hops and yeast from a home brew supplier, you set your recipe up in an app and connect your iPhone to Brewbot via Bluetooth. You can opt to create your own recipe or choose from one of Brewbot’s. When you tap ‘Start brew’ the exact amount of water to be heated is added. Once heated, the valve in the container releases and the water runs into the mashtun, where the grain lies.

At the end of the process, the wort filters through the plate cooler, cooling it from 100ºC to less than 22ºC, ready to ferment. Temperature sensors, load sensors and flow meters aid the automation process and allow the app to communicate with the user to tell them what is happening from start to finish, providing precise temperature and volume readings and gathering data at every step for consistent and repeatable results.

“Using the iPhone OS allowed us to easily pull together all the pieces in order to automate the brewing process and achieve our goals for the app both technically and visually.”

Although the technology isn’t supported on Android or other platforms, it is an aim for the company in the near future.

Aside from the automation side of things, a major quality that separates Brewbot from traditional home brew setups is aesthetics – it is designed to be on display, not tucked away in the garage.

“As most home brewers typically do, we started our journey into brewing using plastic containers and pipes. As we iterated on our setup we were constantly optimising and went from plastic containers to stainless steel.”

The result is a sleek-looking box with a modern timber and stainless steel facade. It’s smart, neat and can be customised with branding to fit in with an office, restaurant or bar.