Tag Archives: beer

Get the Perfect Pint with HOPii Personal Brewery at CES 2018



The popularity of craft beer has ensured a steady stream of smart gadgetry that helps ferment and brew the perfect pint. Here we have the HOPii personal microbrewery which successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter in the autumn raising US$380,000. Allante drinks it in with Jong, CEO of HOPii.

The HOPii advertises itself as a one touch brewery – put the ingredient pods into HOPii device and press START. HOPii does the rest and brews the craft beer for you at its perfection. The HOPii beer pack contains all the ingredients needed – a three-litre bottle of wort, some dry hops and other flavors plus a pack of yeast. The pre-prepared wort gives the HOPii a bit of a headstart, as it were, and the smart features of the HOPii control the internal environment to develop the best beer.

If you want to do your own thing, HOPii has a special “Brewer’s Mode” so you can ferment your own personal craft beer with your specific ingredients. You can put in your own custom recipe into HOPii and ferment your own wort, dry hop, flavours and once ready, set it to the beer’s best drinking temperature or your personal preference.

Although the Kickstarter has finished, it’s now “InDemand” over at Indiegogo for US$399 and delivery in June 2018. Cheers!

Allante Sparks is a video producer at PLuGHiTz Live Special Events.

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Craft Beer at Home with iGulu at CES



Fancy a beer? Me too, but I’ve never brewed my own, though his might change with the iGulu automated home brewing system. Todd looks for some refreshment in the hot halls of tech.

Winning a CES Innovation Honoree award, the iGulu machine brews a beer from ingredients to fresh beverage in anything from seven days to a couple of weeks, depending the receipe. Everything is done in the iGulu, from initial mixing and mashing to the fermentation and pour, with sensors ensuring that the final product is perfect. There are receipes for everything from lagers to stouts and the process can be tweaked via the iGulu app to suit personal taste. There’s a small screen to control and check on progress of the brew. I’m feeling thirsty….

The iGulu is available for pre-order via Indiegogo starting from US$550, with an expected final retail price of US$800.

Todd Cochrane is the host of the twice-weekly Geek News Central Podcast at GeekNewsCentral.com.

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Drones that Deliver Beer



bigstock-Beverage-Series-Beer-110434The Oppikoppi Festival has been taking place in South Africa every year since 1995. It is a big music festival. For this year, the 19th year of the festival, they are going to be trying something new to help distribute beer to the people who attend.

According to HypeBot the festival will make use of small drones that will deliver beer directly to the person who ordered it. He or she won’t have to walk away from the music, and stand in a long line, in order to purchase a beer.

Instead, a small, 8-propeller helicopter drone, that has been loaded with beer, will fly over the festival and locate the person who ordered a beer. The drone will then drop a single beer, which has been attached to a small parachute. Use your smartphone to order the beer, and stay put. The beer will come to you!

This year, the Oppikoppi festival planners are intending to have people hand guide the drones. In other words, the drones won’t be functioning without a human guiding them along behind the scenes. If things work out well, there is potential that other large, outdoor, music festivals may decide to use some beer delivery drones.

Image by Stock Photo Beverage Series Beer by BigStock