Mike Snider

USA TODAY





For the craft beer lover who has everything, here's a gift that will keep on giving: PicoBrew's $800 home beer-brewing machine.

With more than 5,000 breweries making beer in the U.S., you might ask why someone would even want to make their own at home.

Because you can. And if there's anything bigger than the "Eat Local" and "Drink Local" trends, it is the DIY movement.

Home brewing of beer is not new. People have done it since before Prohibition, and a federal law signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 made it legal. More than 1.2 million people home brew beer today, according to the American Homebrewers Association.

But what if you don't want to start from scratch? That's where PicoBrew comes in. The Seattle startup two years ago brought to market its Zymatic home brewing machine ($1,999) aimed at beer enthusiasts. Recently, it began selling a cheaper, more automatic beer machine, the Pico ($799, picobrew.com).

My test drive of the Pico found that it made brewing beer fairly simple, but still more complicated than operating your Mr. Coffee or a Keurig, for instance.

At 12 inches wide, the Pico is smaller than a microwave. I set up the tabletop device on my desk in the USA TODAY offices. To brew beer, you insert a PicoPak. Think of it like a large Keurig pod but instead of coffee, there's hops and grain inside, pre-measured for a specific beer.

After an initial cleaning cycle, I inserted a PicoPak to make Tallgrass Brewing's Buffalo Sweat oatmeal cream stout. This is not an idiot-proof process: I had reversed the lid of the filter and some water began flowing out before my brewing partner Jasper Colt uncovered the mistake. Once restarted, the Pico pushed the warm liquid into the small connected keg over the next two hours.

The Pico started hissing as it heated the water to steam and then began emitting the pleasant aroma of brewery, as the warm water worked its way through the malt and hops. Once the brewing cycle finished, tubes were disconnected and the keg sealed to sit and cool overnight. The next morning, yeast was added and capped, then shaken and left to ferment for five days.

The next week, we transferred the beer to the serving keg, attached a carbonation adapter and refrigerated the keg. Two days later, we tapped the keg and shared the beer with co-workers.

A bunch of journalists, drinking free suds during office hours? Let's just say we were primed to like it. Still, they were surprised at its freshness and the stout's creamy texture. For me, it was seemed even better than the same brewery's beer from a can.

One problem: The five liters (or about 1.25 gallons) of beer was gone too soon.

There's something supremely cool about making your own beer. But the Pico does require more handholding than you might think from the promotional videos.

Once you get up to speed, you can choose from several dozens of PicoPaks ($18-$30 each) to make different styles — amber ales to saisons — and from a growing number of well-known craft breweries such as Rogue Ales and Upslope Brewing.

Admittedly, you can buy a lot of beer for the machines asking price. But tapping your own keg, that's priceless.

Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.