iGulu F1 smart beer maker review – It’s like a bread machine, but for beer!

REVIEW – We’ve dabbled a little in home brewing but our results were not consistent. And what’s worse than spending time and money and then waiting months for a beer that’s just meh? When we saw this, it seemed like an almost guaranteed way to get (fast!) results. Like a bread machine for beer! We had to test it out.

What is it?

The iGulu F1 smart beer maker is an all-in-one, automated home craft beer brewer. You just add your beer kit and filtered water into the fermentation keg, start the brewing process with the push of a button, wait a little more than a week (watching the progress on a display), and then pour. 

What’s included?

• brewing maching
• keg
• dispensing coupler (2) and tube
• tap handle 
• spout
• drip tray
• instruction manual

Tech specs

Design and features

Assembly, Installation, Setup

We have brewed beer using kits in the past. In fact, three years ago we reviewed the Brewferm homebrewing starter kit. The process with this “smart” machine was significantly simpler and much, much faster using than any previous homebrew kits we’ve tried. 

First, you unpackage, clean and sanitize the parts, and find a good spot for the beer machine. We found that it fits very nicely on top of our small drink fridge.

The keg has a light that is pretty bright, so be aware of that when you pick your location. The light tells you what the machine is doing; the light is orange when fermenting, green when cooling and white on standby.

The package comes with three brewing kits: an amber lager, bavarian wheat and pale ale. Refills are $60 (3 kits) or  $80 (5 kits) on the iGulu site, with an option for a discount if you subscribe. They also have recipes for hard cider, kombucha, and wine. We started with the pale ale (we’ve now started brewing the amber, but it won’t finish for another week, so this review will go through our experience with the pale ale).

The only thing we needed to purchase to brew the beer, which wasn’t included in the package, was a gallon of purified water. (We later purchased a sanitizer to clean out the keg between brews.)

There’s also an option to add a CO2 cartridge, which you need to purchase separately, but we haven’t tested that yet. If you do purchase one, make sure it uses a threaded connection (not quick connect).

The directions on the pale ale were very clear and easy, with one small exception: after adding everything, we still had three packs of priming sugar left over. After reading comments on the website, we saw that others had commented on the same thing, and said to add the sugar. We also watched a YouTube video, which verified that we should add the sugar, so we did.

Then you secure the lid in place.

You put the keg in the machine and attach both the pressure line and dispensing line.

The RFID sticker inside the ingredient kit will automatically configure the machine, you just need to slick it on the designated spot on the site of the machine.

Once the keg and sticker are in place, you tap the display screen to start the brewing cycle.

Then you watch and wait. It’s very quiet, but the light and display let’s you know it’s working.

The display tells you exactly where it is in the process, the current temp, the PSI reading, and most importantly, how many days until your beer is ready.

App

There’s also an iGulu app.

It’s easy to set up and connect with your brewing machine.

The app gives you some additional options for customization. Because we were doing the standard beer kit that came with the machine, we had no need to use these settings.

However, I can see that having the app could come in handy if you were away from your beer machine and wanted to check the status. We both work from home a few days a week, so we can check our machine anytime we want, but if you travel or spend long hours away from home, this could be handy. 

Performance

We waited 9 days, as instructed, and then tasted our beer as soon as the light switched to green.

It was very foamy! But the taste was excellent. Following the advice of others online who experienced the same, we waited two days.

And that worked! The beer was delicious! What a luxury to have your own cold beer on tap? This is certainly our new favorite gadget.

After finishing our first round, we were able to clean and sanitize the keg within 15 minutes. It was very easy to disassemble, wash and put back together.

We’ve now started our next round, and also ordered a CO2 cartridge to play with. We’re tentatively expecting to wait an additional two days before our next beer (the amber) reaches our target, but it’s still amazingly fast to have such good beer, brewed so easily, at home in less than two weeks.

What I like about the iGulu smart beer maker

• It’s fast.
• It’s easy to use.
• It makes really good beer!

What needs to be improved

• It’s just a small hiccup, but we’d recommend clearer instructions (specifically on adding sugar to the pale ale), and we’d suggest making the two extra day waiting period a standard practice (unless you really love foam).

Final thoughts

This is a really fun, innovative gadget — and your friends will certainly volunteer to help test it.

Price: $699.99
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by iGulu. iGulu did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.