Regardless, I just can't see this "catching on" to any degree with that price. Do they have plans to scale or something?
It looks to me that the picobrew is for those who don't want to do the 'heavy lifting' of homebrewing and want to say that they homebrew. The automatic bread machine of this generation?
For that price tag you aren't going to get people who want to test out homebrewing. My first homebrew setup was ~$150. This included two buckets (fermentor and bottling), kettle for boiling the wort and hops, bottles, basic bottling accessories, and my first extract kit (fat tire clone).
On the other side they claim this is a professional tool. However, I would highly doubt any real brewery would use this. They have their own pilot systems where they typically make 20-50 gallon test batches. The output of 2.5 gallons is no where near ideal for a test batch. A gallon of beer gets you roughly 10 (12 oz) bottles.
I'm not quite sure who their market actually is. Maybe it's rich people who want to make their own beer? Seems like a small market.
Their machine (from what I gather in the video) comprises the following features: Brewpi ~$60 (http://www.brewpi.com) 5 Gallon Keg $60 used $110 new (http://www.homebrewing.org/5-Gallon-Cornelius-Keg-Ball-Lock-...) PicoBrew has a small mash tun (~3 gallon?) 10 gallon mash tun - http://www.homebrewing.org/10-Gallon-Converted-Igloo-Cooler-...
I don't understand where it boils the wort and how it actually mixes these ingredients.
Realistically, anyone who is serious about homebrewing most likely won't be using this. You can get the same amount of control that they advertise with fermentation chambers, your own brewpi, and with detailed logging. Also part of the fun is the actual brew process of boiling the wort and throwing in hops with friends and never having to drink the same beer again.
It'll be interesting to see how this thing actually does.
Just my $0.02
I actually quite enjoy my bread machine. My wife and I both work and are active in our community. It's extremely wonderful to spend 5 minutes before bed and have bread in the morning. It's cheaper than buying bread at the store (ok, the 50¢ loaves give it a run for it's money), and we know exactly whats in it.
Once this comes down in price, which it or something like it will, to the point where it's a few hundred I can see it being used in much the same way by many folks: Good beer is expensive. OK beer is cheap. Home-machine-made beer is better than OK and cheaper.
Full grain brewing is significantly more expensive (unless you do the "Brew in a Bag" style) simple setups easily put you into the $400+ range. Purpose-built full grain brewing systems setup with pumps, three burners and kettles will set you back $2500-5000 depending upon how nice of a setup you get and the volume (15 gallons to 40 gallons), and that doesn't even include the fermentation equipment which for heated and cooled conicals can be $2000+.
Homebrewing has a very active higher end market which is only getting more active as it becomes easier for individuals to move from hobbyist to professional pico/nano/micro-brewer.
If you're batch sparging you can use your boil kettle to heat strike, then sparge water. You just need an extra vessel for the first runnings.
Brewing can certainly be done on the cheap if money is more constrained than time and effort. And there are definitely no shortage of creative ways people have devised to save some money.