A Keurig for Home Brewing Beer Will Give You Small Batches on Demand

Drinking beer isn't exactly tough work, but brewing it on your own can be a disaster. Ex-Microsoft Vice President Bill Mitchell is trying to fix the latter problem with PicoBrew, a company that makes self-contained home brewing machines. PicoBrew's latest, the Pico, uses prepackaged pods to brew beer like you'd make a single cup of coffee.

PicoBrew's original home brewer, the Zymatic, is large and still requires a pretty sophisticated knowledge of brewing to operate. The Pico is smaller at only 12 inches wide and brews 5-liter batches of beer instead of the Zymatic's 9.5-liter batches. It's about the size of a large microwave, and at 30 pounds it's heavy enough that you probably don't want to move it around too much. The real rub, though, is that the main unit doesn't contain the mini keg where the beer ends up, so you need space for that, too (and room in your fridge to cool it). It's a huge step up in practicality from the Zymatic, but still far from a countertop appliance.