Local homebrewers launch product to make brewing easier

Friends Anthony Stoeber and Eric Tanner started homebrewing two years ago, and as they got into it they constantly looked for ways to make the brewing process easier.

A typical homebrewer sets up in the kitchen, using all of the burners on the stove. The process is messy, pots tend to boil over and it can take a long time. That’s how their Brewers Buddy concept was born.
 
“Brewers Buddy isn’t meant to help you brew better beer, because there is still room for human error,” Tanner says. “But through our own trial and error, it definitely makes it easier.”
 
Tanner, who has an entrepreneurial degree, and Stoeber, who is in marketing, developed Brewers Buddy through their own R&D and feedback from local homebrewing friends as well as help from a few local breweries.
Brewers Buddy gravity-fed system 
Brewers Buddy is a patent-pending gravity-fed homebrew system. The three-tier brewing stand has two burners — one on top and one on bottom — and a mash turn in the middle. The two burners allows for the liquor tank at the top and the brew kettle at the bottom to be heated at the same time, so liquid can flow throughout the brewing process without stopping.
 
Production of the Brewers Buddy is done in China, Tanner says, because the units are ordered one at a time and it’s expensive to do that in the U.S. He hopes to move production to the U.S. in the future.
 
There are similar products on the market, but Tanner says Brewers Buddy is more versatile and a fraction of the price of similar systems. Although Brewers Buddy is gravity-fed, you can also convert it to a pump-fed system.
 
For now, Stoeber and Tanner want to focus on homebrew retail sales for Brewers Buddy. But in the near future they plan to market their system to nanobreweries and larger breweries to produce experimental batches.
 
“We want to keep it scalable and build our brand around the Brewers Buddy product,” Tanner says.
 
Stoeber and Tanner are hosting a launch party for their Kickstarter campaign at 1-5 p.m. March 5 at Braxton Brewing in Covington. The pair hopes to raise $55,000 through Kickstarter to offset the personal funds they’ve already invested into Brewers Buddy. If you’re interested in attending the event, tickets are $30 and are available here.