What the Do-It-Yourself Craft Beer Pod Machine May Mean to the Canadian Consumer

Imagine stumbling out of bed, heading downstairs to your trusty countertop appliance, inserting a pod and brewing a refreshing mug of…craft beer?

Recently, the beverage world was abuzz with the news of a pod-based brewing system by PicoBrew, allowing home brewers to access their inner Keurig. As part of the do-it-yourself trend beloved by hipsters and aspiring cicerones alike, the machine lets users customize the bitterness and alcohol content to their heart’s content. If images of pouring a friend’s home brew surreptitiously down the drain while loudly professing your appreciation for its hoppiness scares you off this system, fear not: there are some legitimate craft brewery names involved in the creation of the PicoPaks, such as Dogfish Head, Rogue, Cervecería Barbarian and Canada’s own Dieu du Ciel.

Targeted towards an aspiring brewer with no experience, users load hop and grain modules into the machine, press “brew” and two hours later, enjoy a refreshing libation.

The unit, 12 inches wide and 31 pounds, is $499 through KickStarter, although a release from PicoBrew says that it will be available for general availability for $999 in the spring of 2016.

The company also hopes to create a community of brewers and novices posting recipes in a Brewers Marketplace. Both the sharing of recipes and individualized brewing techniques of the PicoBrew come at an interesting time for the ever-growing craft brewing industry in Canada. 

Despite beer being a favourite amongst Canadian consumers, the category has seen a decrease over the last year, according to some industry analysts. “Beer, which is Canada’s most popular alcoholic beverage, has declined by six per cent this year while cocktails and other drinks were down by 10 per cent,” reported research firm NPD Group, which tracks consumer habits in restaurants. 

Let’s not assume my fellow Canadians aren’t imbibing, however. According to NPD, customers are ordering craft beer when they head out — to the tune of a steady seven percent increase year over year.

As more Canadians turn to craft beverages, the number of independent craft breweries in Canada is gaining traction: according to the 2015 annual statistical report from Beer Canada, 520 licensed breweries operate across the country, an almost 70 percent rise in the last five years. Although the distribution and reach of many of these breweries remain small, sometimes, there are marked exceptions, such as the widely publicized news that independently owned Mill Street Brewery — a Toronto-based brewing company with several restaurant locations in Ontario — was purchased by Labatt Breweries of Canada (owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev ) in late October. This sale led to a polite dismissal of Mill Street from the Ontario Craft Brewers Association, which stated in a release that “OCB was designed to promote small, independent craft brewers in Ontario. That mission will continue. This logically has led us to restrict membership to breweries under 400,000 HL including all affiliated owners/partners. Of course, Mill Street would no longer qualify under this new ownership structure, just as Creemore did not qualify when it was sold to Molson.”

The issue that craft brewers face when hitting it big is the risk of losing the cult following that they may have amongst beer consumers. “There’s a question of authenticity for the big brewers,” Ian Coutts, author of Brew North: How Canadians Made Beer and Beer Made  Canada told The Globe and Mail. “Even if they made a good beer, people wouldn’t buy it. … The minute people start to think of something like Mill Street as Labatt, that will hurt them. It’s like indie bands. You’ve got to be authentic. You can’t get big. That’s a real kiss of death.”

Amongst an audience that is searching for that perception of being “authentic”, however accurate that may be, a brew-it-yourself option like the PicoBrew may be an appealing alternative.