It’s May 4th. It’s Star Wars Day.
And you should celebrate that. With beer.
My absolutely tenuous link between Star Wars Day and this particular gadget is that it’s called the BeerDroid. Get it? And it kinda looks like R2, if you paint it blue and white and squint your eyes just right. It’s a robot, too. It’s a beer-brewing robot.
From the same company that brews Coopers beer, the BeerDroid is a Wi-Fi enabled device that BrewArt calls the “world’s first fully automated personal brewing system”. It’s a temperature controlled environment that you fill up with BrewArt’s ‘BrewPrints‘, little black boxes filled with yeast and hops and other beer-brewing goodies.
It’s actually pretty cool.
I’ve used the BeerDroid for two different brews since I’ve had it. It brews a square 10 litres of beer over the course of its several-week fermentation process, keeping the temperature just right no matter the ambient, and alerting you every step of the way — a bunch of sensors can work out when primary fermentation is over, for example.
And when it’s done, the BeerDroid will bring your completed brew down to a storage temperature, stopping the brewing process. From there, you can decant your delicious alcoholism beverage into smaller 5-litre storage tanks, and serve them either from those or through a separate self-chilling BrewFlo.
I haven’t written my review of the BrewArt BeerDroid yet, but suffice to say that if you’re willing to make the initial investment, it takes all the headache out of brewing beer. You’re brewing something, and it’s pretty awesome.
And, um, Star Wars, or something.
Stay tuned for my full review of the BeerDroid in the coming week, but if you decide you want one right now, there’s a good reason to jump in. For Star Wars Day, BrewArt will throw in a free apron — woo! — when you buy five BrewPrints. The BeerDroid itself will set you back around $800 (you can find it at Harvey Norman), and the BrewFlo dispenser is another $700.