Rise Of The Beerbots: Is Tech Taking The Craft Out Of Homebrewing?
Automated systems have turned the messy, ancient art of brewing into a tidy hobby requiring fairly minimal skill, and of course, a smartphone or tablet. Critics ask: Where's the craft in that?
In 2009, food writer Emma Christensen began brewing beer at home. She quickly grew to love each stage of the hours-long process, much of which is spent tending to a crock of boiling wort, or unfermented beer, and adding hops every few minutes. Over the course of making more than a hundred batches, she has become skilled at the art of turning barley, water, hops and yeast into beer.
So Christensen, like many homebrewers, is both amused and mystified by one of the latest innovations of the tech age: automated countertop brewing systems, sometimes referred to as beerbots. Like the homebrewer's version of the bread
