4 Reasons Automated Brewing Systems are Great for Apartments

If you’ve ever looked into homebrewing, you know that it can take up a lot of space, especially if you want to do full size batches. It requires plenty of equipment and gadgets to make beer efficiently. To name a few, a large kettle, wort chiller, 1-2 fermenters, bottling equipment or kegging supplies, and the list goes on. Having lived and homebrewed in a small Boston apartment, I know that there’s not always a lot of space to leave such equipment. Often times there would be a fermenter sitting out in the living room. Automated brewing systems can solve a lot of the troubles with apartment homebrewing, so let’s take a look at a few examples.

Space

I already began to touch on the space factor when comparing automated homebrewing systems to more traditional setups. Any one of the small batch systems will take up significantly less space than homebrewing gear for one gallon batches.

Homebrewers who do brew in apartments typically come up with clever ways to deal with space issues, but automated brewing systems cut out the fat in the brewing process meaning all your brewing equipment now just takes up a few square feet.

Less Waste

I won’t dig into the intricacies of brewhouse efficiency, but on a basic level, the higher your brewhouse efficiency the less grain you need to make a beer. Those with houses can compost spent grains or throw them far back in the woods, but for homebrewers in apartments, that option might not be available. Instead, it has to go in the garbage. And depending on the apartment, that means more trips to the dumpster, or limiting your other waste so you don’t go over your trash collection limit. Using a few less pounds of grain on brew-day can be the difference there.

Less Cool Storage Space Required

This sort of ties into the space section, but instead of square footage, we’re looking at the amount of space your finished beer takes up. Depending on your system, finished beer is served from a small keg or from a separate dispensing system. The systems that do have their own serving capabilities help save you fridge space by not having to store beer in the fridge. This is extra helpful because many of the fridges included with apartments are smaller than most of the ones you would find in an owned living space.

The Ability to Brew 5 Gallon Batches in City Apartments

Brewing 5 gallons of beer without using a partial boil method is typically too tall of an order for any stove-top. Just like refrigerators, city apartment stoves also run on the small side, or are quite dated. And depending on your location. You may not be able get a propane burner to brew outside. The Brewie is an automated brewing system that can brew 5 gallons of homebrew indoors, making it ideal for city dwelling homebrewers.

There are of course other benefits to owning an automated brewing system that reach beyond just apartment homebrewers.

Being able to control the fermentation right from your phone is a great feature to have regardless of if you live in an apartment or not. There is only one other device for homebrewers that has a similar functionality, but it doesn’t brew the beer for you. You still have to do all of the other things we listed in our Automated Systems vs Traditional Brewing article.

If you have any questions or comments about the limitations of apartment homebrewing, please leave them below in the comments. We’d love to get your take on the situation.