Ever since I posted my review of the Picobrew Zymatic (http://www.experimentalbrew.com/blogs/denny/homebrewing-zymatic-way) the one question I’ve heard over and over again is “how’s the beer?”. Now that I’ve had a chance to ferment out 4-5 beers I made with the Zymatic, I’m prepared to answer that question. The answer is “It’s as good as you make it!” What I mean by that is that the Zymatic is not in any way a limiting factor in beer quality…that’s up to the brewer. The Zymatic is just an easy way to get repeatable results when you brew. The quality of the beer is up to the brewer, just like with any other brewing system. But the point I want to make is that the Zymatic itself is not in any manner a drawback to making great beer. Besides my own brews, I had a chance to try some by Annie Johnson and other Picobrew team members when I visited their headquarters in Seattle. They were all uniformly great! So, here’s what I’m doing. A couple weeks ago, I brewed a batch of my Rye IPA recipe (http://wiki.homebrewersassociation.org/DCRyeIPA), a beer that I’ve brewed dozens and dozens of times, using my cooler/batch sparge system. Today, I’;m gonna keg that beer and harvest the yeast. In the next day or so, I’ll brew exactly the same recipe, using the same bags of grain and hops, using the Zymatic. I fully expect that the only difference will be that I won’t be grumbling so much about cleanup when I use the Zymatic! Then I’ll set up a blind triangle tasting to assess the beers. I’m not going to be surprised if there are some minor differences, given that I have to tweak parameters on the Zymatic a bit to match how my cooler functions. But I’m gonna be astounded if the beers aren’t incredibly similar. I’ll let ya know in a few weeks…..