About this project
$112,396
203
Ever wanted to brew your own beer ? Know someone who's looking for a shiny addition to their (future) hobby ? With the rise of craft beer and the support of organizations like the American Homebrewers Association (http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/) home brewing is not only well established but rapidly gaining in popularity with an estimated 1.2M homebrewers in the US today.
For many beer geeks brewing has been a creative and rewarding hobby, I know it has for me. I setup Bru Gear to push my hobby to the next level by designing and manufacturing high quality brewing kettles and fermenters. Our goal is to support many new and existing brewers produce truly exceptional beer. Hopefully ourselves as well !
Once upon a time...
Early in 2012 I decided it was time to reward my hobby with a shiny new prize, I wanted to setup the 'ultimate' automated home brewery. A system that would rival small batch professional brewing platforms. I searched the market and quickly discovered I couldn’t find the value I was looking for, where high quality, functionality and reasonable cost intersected.
After a lot of discussion and many beers with my collaborators we decided to put multiple decades worth of product development and manufacturing experience to good use. We started by developing a kettle design that would meet our goals. Having started the kettle design we also started working on a fermenter, to fully round out the brewery and, frankly, add more bling ! We put these into CAD, and worked on manufacturing our designs for testing and personal use.
Pleased with our creations we showed our friends and started gaining positive feedback about the quality of the brew kettles, some suggestions for ‘next time’ (we love feedback !) and requests for the products.
Based on this feedback we have decided to take things to the next level by launching larger production runs, and that’s how we get to be on Kickstarter. It's time to get the word out and start working towards this goal. With your funding, we can buy a huge roll of stainless steel and deliver production products!
You can find out more about us and your future shiny objects of desire at www.bru-gear.com
The Funding
We are looking to get into the volume production phase with the kettles and fermenters. We also plan to craft full brewery systems. With your pledge we will be able to leverage greater buying power and thus drive lower costs. Lower costs we then pass onto our supporters – the flywheel needs momentum and together we will make it turn.
Our initial goal will allow us to buy the raw materials in bulk, building a volume of products to hit the aggressive price points we're looking for. Getting beyond our goal will help us drive R&D for ideas we have for some exciting new products!
The Rewards
To participate in our Kickstarter, press the big green "Back This Project" button or directly on any of the rewards that interest you on the right.
Not only will you be supporting a brewer getting started in moving a hobby based business forward, already a dream come true, you'll also get your hands on some great stuff.
For those who either wish to brew with our ProBoiler(tm) range of products or have brewing buddies interested, we are offering our brew kettles, fermenters and complete brewery systems at supporter only values as awards.These aren't converted designs, but actual high quality 18 gauge stainless steel products, designed and manufactured from the ground up. The brew kettles include a 3 piece ball valve and a brewing thermometer, so you have a functional brew pot out of the box. The fermenter will come with a tri-clamp butterfly dump valve, racking arm and thermometer.
The ProBoiler(tm) RIMS nano-brewery small batch/recipe development system (damn that's a mouthful) is a complete, all-in-one system for the professional brewer. Delivering state of the art touch control and precision in a 1BBL batch size it is ideally suited to recipe development and producing small batch specialty craft beers.
How To Support Bru Gear
CREATE a Kickstarter account if you don't have one already. It's simple; all it takes is an email address and a password
SIGN IN at Amazon.com - if you already have an account, you're all set. If not, no worries, it is easy to set-up as well
PLEDGE at whatever level you like! Your card will only be charged if we reach our full goal
SHARE this with your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and whoever else crosses your path! Let everyone know you are a backer for Bru Gear. And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/BruGear
Thanks for reading this far. We hope to hear from you. We need you to hit our goal and deliver the products at these prices. So PLEASE let your friends know about Bru Gear's Kickstarter !
Cheers and don't forget to
Huge thanks go out to:-
Scott (Mr) KungFu - the creative media guy, professional (& very patient) videographer & photographer
Jack & Patrick for their invaluable work on the control panel schematics
Brian & team for turning the schematics into control panel reality
Eugenio for his work on the control software, making the user interface easy enough for Phil to use!
Mr. CAD Erich, who turned napkin sketches into 2D & 3D wonders
Everyone at the Arizona Society of Homebrewers for their support, constructive feedback and testing
Risks and challenges
From the initial prototypes we've changed a number of details on the CAD manufacturing drawings ahead of production and are confident we're ready to go ! Bru Gear understands that moving from prototype to production is a large undertaking but its one we have been involved with in a number of engineering and factory environments from our professional careers. From dealing with suppliers ensuring we have the right processes in place consistently producing a quality product, and all the way to getting those products into the hands of our supporters on time. Bru Gear has mapped out the challenges and we have a volume ramp goal we're confident in. We don't expect everything going smoothly and have devised our plan with contingencies in place to handle the bumps in the road that may (ok, will) come up along the way. Let's see how we do!
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