PicoBrew - Bill Mitchell
Bill Mitchell shows off the PicoBrew mini brewing machine at the 2014 GeekWire Summit.

PicoBrew is raising more money to help fuel development of its beer makers.

The Picobrew Zymatic
The Picobrew Zymatic

The Seattle-based startup just reeled in another $2.3 million from a group of investors to support the company’s growth as it brings on more employees and readies for its next product rollout. Total funding for the 2-year-old company now stands at $5 million.

PicoBrew’s main product is the Zymatic, which basically allows you to have a full-scale brewery on your kitchen countertop. The device is simply a brewing box connected by hose to a Cornelius keg and mixes a desired amount of malted barley, hops, and water to produce beer in less than four hours. After some yeast addition and a week of fermentation, your own craft beer is ready to drink.

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KegSmarts.

There’s some neat technology behind the Zymatic, which retails at $1,999. The PicoBrew Recipe Crafter is a web-based software that logs data and records recipes so you can brew identical beer time after time. Brewers can also share and import recipes made by others.

Earlier this year, PicoBrew rolled out a second product called KegSmarts, a Wi-Fi enabled device that hooks up to a standard kegerator and provides information on an OLED display like temperature, quantity, and type of beer — all of which can be monitored and controlled from a mobile device.

PicoBrew, which originally raised more than $660,000 in a Kickstarter campaign, employs 33 and will use the fresh funds to expand its team, gear up for sales of its current products, and prepare its next-generation product line. The company was founded by CEO Bill Mitchell, who spent nearly two decades at Microsoft leading teams that developed PDAs, smartphones, and wearable computing; his brother, Jim; and Avi Geiger, another former Microsoft employee.

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