In early October, the lovely team at Pinter dropped me a line and kindly offered to send me one of their home beer making kits to try [gifted]. Here’s a review of how it went.
During 2024, I spotted a few references to Pinter around the web and thought it looked like a great idea. The company website describes Pinter as: “precision-engineered technology for anyone to enjoy 10 pints of award-winning Fresh Beer at home.”
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m always trying to cut down on waste and plastic usage, so the idea of brewing our own beer at home really appealed to me. And while I’m not a huge beer drinker myself, The Chap enjoys an ice-cold lager every now and then, so he was more than happy to help me sample whatever we ended up making (so selfless!).
After some holidays and a hiccup with the post, my Pinter finally arrived in mid-November – just in time for me to catch the flu. Not exactly ideal for setting up a home-brew machine, so I had to wait until I felt better before getting started, which was in early December.
First impressions of the home brew machine
Once I was back on my feet, I cracked open the Pinter-branded box.
The bright-yellow Pinter, emblazoned with a canary, was neatly packed with all the necessary equipment, a Canary Pilsner fresh pack and a Canaries beer glass, which all looked high-quality. And the box itself unfolded into a scene of Norwich City FC’s home at Carrow Road – a lovely touch if you’re a football fan.
Colour me impressed. The attention to detail was fantastic.
Here’s a video of my unboxing:
Getting set up
Once unpacked, I scanned the QR code printed on the inside of the box and downloaded the Pinter app onto my phone. From there, I followed the step-by-step instructions, complete with helpful videos, to get brewing.
A word of warning: when you get started, you need to allow yourself plenty of time for cleaning and purifying the kit – nobody wants to brew nasties into their beer!
It’s worth saying that it’s a bit of a workout too. Shaking the Pinter to clean it and mix the ingredients can feel like weightlifting (especially if you’ve just been ill). If you’re like me and have cooked-spaghetti arms, you might need someone stronger to help.
Attaching the brew dock was also a little tricksy. Admittedly, my hand-eye coordination isn’t great, so The Chap had to rescue me. He managed it first go, naturally.
So, all in all, a simple experience (if you ignore the fact that I need to work on building some muscle).
Keeping it cool
Once you’ve added your water, yeast and beer mix, you’ll need to find plenty of fridge space to keep the Pinter at the right temperature. We had considered leaving ours outside the back door, but December was surprisingly mild, so that wasn’t an option. Luckily, we have a second fridge, which we turned on to store the Pinter. If you don’t have a spare fridge, this could be a challenge.
Brewing and waiting
Once it’s brewing, things are it’s pretty straightforward. The app guides you through the process to get the brew just right – Canary Pilsner takes a few weeks. Thankfully the app pings you reminders of the next steps, which is super handy.
The results so far
Sadly, things didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped. We were aiming to have our first pint of Canary Pilsner ready by Christmas Eve, but our first pour was all foam. We tried waiting an hour or two, but it was still mostly foam and tasted really sweet, suggesting it wasn’t fully ready.
Because it was Christmas, the live chat Customer Support wasn’t available, so we decided to pop it back in the fridge for another week. By New Year, it was better – but still mostly foam.
Once we were fully into the new year, I remembered to try the live chat and got through to Customer Support straightaway. They were really helpful and asked me about the set up and how it went.
After answering their questions, we deduced that that we didn’t combine the fresh mix well enough, which meant that the carbon dioxide released by the beer wasn’t absorbed into the liquid, so it just came out as gas during the pour.
Final thoughts
Overall, I love the concept and the instructions are really well put together, but we haven’t had the best luck with the actual brew. We’re going to give it another go and mix it well. We both like the look of the En Casa Mexican lager and the Dark Matter stout, so we’ll give those a try next.
I’ll update the post when that happens!
Want to try Pinter?
You can use the code INNORFOLK50 online for £50 off the price of an NCFC Pinter and 2 free beers when you subscribe.
