We looked over the equipment, we loaded the Pak, we pushed the button, and a few weeks later, we had beer. We bring the first brew session on the Pico Pro system to a close with the tasting of the Pliny the Elder clone recipe, Plinius Maximus. Watch this video to see how our beer turned out.

Beer Preparation Process

Before we get into the tasting, the process of getting the beer prepped for drinking was note worthy. With the two kegs and the tubing that Pico sent to us, I was able to do a closed transfer by pushing CO2 into the first keg and letting the beer flow into the second keg. That was the first time I was able to do that and it was pretty cool.

This recipe came with hops in a small (the size of a large tea bag) fine mesh bag so I put that into the keg so I could dry hop while I carbonated and leave it in there during the serving process.

After a week in the keg, the beer was ready to pour on camera.

Plinius Maximus Tasting Notes

Because we live on the East Coast of the USA, we don’t have Pliny the Elder readily available to us so we are reviewing this beer as it is and not comparing to its commercially available counterpart.

On the nose, there was only a slight hop aroma. It did have an interesting floral aroma. We couldn’t tell which hops were used in the brew but we’re guessing they are the three Cs (Columbus, and Centennial).

We could detect some of the malt base in the aroma – not super strong but present.

In the flavor – the mouthfeel was full bodied. Mike reported that the mash could have been contribute to the fullness.

There was also one element that Mike couldn’t put his finger on but there was a bit of an off-flavor that he attributed to a less than vigorous boil. It wasn’t terrible but it was noticeable.

Overall, it was a good beer and better than the first extract beer that Mike brewed.

I have another Pak to brew and we’ll see how that one comes out. I may experiment more with the yeast to see if I can improve on the process.

BREW ON!

Check out our other PicoBrew posts – The Pico Unboxing and the first brew session.