Get No-Effort Home-Brewed Beer With This Automated System

People have been successfully brewing beer for thousands of years, but technology can make it a whole lot easier. A new system called the iGulu, launching on Kickstarter, takes all the labor out of brewing at home. The automated home brewing system is the Crock-Pot of beer. Just stick in the ingredients, push a button, and let it do its magic while you busy yourself with something more pressing, like drinking other beer.

The tabletop machine comes with pre-packaged brew recipes that you just pour in with yeast and water. Select a recipe from the system’s library—which includes lagers, ales, stouts, pumpkin beer, and more—and the machine will do the rest, boiling the malts, mixing the hops, adding in the yeast, and fermenting. In a few weeks, you’ll have yourself a craft brew. An associated app lets you monitor the brew phases, temperatures, and—for true brewing geeks—saccharification (the break-up of sugars).

The downside is, naturally, that an automated brewer is a lot more expensive than the more labor- and knowledge-intensive DIY method (the financial website Mint estimates that your first basic home-brew batch costs about $140). There are a few brewers left at the special price of $489, or you can get one with a mini-keg and ingredient packs for $549.

All images courtesy iGulu via Kickstarter

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