Boulder, CO
BrewJacket is coming back to the Kickfurther community for its second Co-Op! We successfully repaid our first CoOp in February of 2016 and successfully closed a Kickstarter for our newest product, the Immersion Pro, in March of 2016. Immersion Pro gives low volume craft beer brewers and homebrewers a commercial grade environment for their fermenting beer, allowing brewers to achieve commercial quality beer fermentations without large expensive systems or bulky refrigerators.
We are coming back to the Kickfurther community to build our holiday inventory for Immersion Pro. Since closing our Kickstarter, we have signed on 20 homebrew supply shops across the country as well as Amazon through their startup launchpad store. With the help of the Kickfurther community, we will be able to fulfill this demand.
BrewJacket, Inc. was created at Cornell University in 2013 and was a part of the university’s startup accelerator program, eLab. In June of 2014, BrewJacket successfully closed a kickstarter campaign to create the Immersion fermentation control system. Soon after, the company moved from Ithaca, NY to Boulder, CO where it now builds all units.
BrewJacket, Inc. has three operating co-founders, Aaron Walls, Matthew Goff, and Evgeniy Tkachenko.
CEO
Aaron began homebrewing while an undergrad at The University of Georgia in 2005. While living in Atlanta, GA he was faced with a small apartment and hot summers that make even saisons hard to ferment. It was here that the concept of Immersion was born. In 2012 he moved to Ithaca NY where he attended Cornell University and met Matt and Evgeniy. He graduated in 2014 with an MBA and moved to Boulder Colorado where he is now building Immersion units. Aaron is the firm’s Chief Executive Officer.
CTO
Matt encountered Aaron during an entrepreneurship class at Cornell where he let Aaron talk him into pulling all nighters to create a business. Matt, lover of beer, was convinced and became the firm’s Chief Technical Officer. Matt recently finished his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University and is a new dad.
VP Engineering
Having known Matt from Cornell, Evgeniy shares the same love of beer as is expected from a true Russian. Evgeniy decided to bring his experience as a mechanical engineer in Texas to BrewJacket in hopes of brewing the perfect beer. In his spare time, Evgeniy enjoys trying new beer, learning about everything, and being a nerd. He is the firm’s VP of Engineering.
From the makers of the BrewJacket Immersion comes Immersion Pro, now including the ability to heat:
Immersion Pro provides a commercial grade environment for your home brewed craft beer. By seamlessly warming or cooling your freshly brewed wort, Immersion Pro gives yeast the perfect environment to produce flawless craft beer without bulky equipment like refrigerators, external thermostats, or heating wraps. Immersion Pro’s solid state heat exchange engine can maintain your ferment to 0.5º F of your set temperature, and warm or cool your fermenting beer to 35º F above or below the ambient temperature in your house or small brewery. Just set the optimum temperature for your yeast, and Immersion will meticulously maintain it for as long as the unit is plugged in.
Immersion Pro close up
Immersion Pro utilizes a patent pending solid state heat exchange engine that can move heat into or out of your fermenting beer on the fly. This means you just set the temperature at which you want to ferment, and Immersion Pro takes care of the rest. You no longer have to find the coldest closet in your house in the peak of the summer, or the warmest nook in your living room during the winter, or sacrifice space in your kegerator to lager your next batch and serve 50º F kegs.
Immersion fermenting in a living room
Immersion Pro manages the fermentation temperature of your homebrewed craft beer. Temperature management is one of the two critical components of the cold side of brewing (the other being sanitation). As brewers, we spend the vast majority of our active brewing time on the hot side: developing the grain bill and hop schedule, mashing, and boiling. We often ignore the role yeast have to play in our beer because we don’t have the space or the right combination of bulky equipment to provide them with the correct environment to transform your hard work into delicious craft beer.
Yeast will make or break your beer. You could have brewed your wort to absolute perfection, but if your ale yeast needs to be between 65º and 68º and your house happened to 70º, a plethora of defects will form that make your beer taste more like homebrew than quality craft beer. According to Dr. Chris White and Jamil Zainasheff, authors of Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation, “One of the greatest things a brewer can do to improve his beer is manage the fermentation temperature. This is far more important than using fancy fermentors or even all-grain brewing.”
While Immersion Pro solves the problem of cold side (fermentation) management, it is no substitute for correct brewing hot side brewing procedure, such as mash temperature, hop scheduling, oxygenation of your wort, and of course, proper sanitation.
Since Immersion Pro is solid state, the only moving part is the fan. No glycol, no pumps, no heating wraps, no bulky external controllers, no refrigerators. This means the device is incredibly small and can fit into any spare place in your house, and has an incredibly long life expectancy.
Immersion Pro on its side
Immersion works by moving heat electrically. It utilizes thermocouples wired together in a tight package (called a thermoelectric chip) to move heat in the direction of the electrical current. For the original Immersion, we hard coded this direction and only allowed the current to move from left to right, causing heat to move out of your beer, through the rod, and out the heat sink on the top of the device.
For Immersion Pro, we are adding a voltage direction regulator called an H-bridge that allows us to control, in real time, which way the voltage flows: either left to right (cooling) or from right to left (heating). When the current moves from right to left, we are able to pull heat from your ambient environment into the heat sink, push it into the rod, and allow it to gently warm your beer. When your set temperature is achieved, Immersion Pro reduces the current flow and waits until your beer needs to be warmed (or cooled) again.
Thermoelectric chip and our custom circuit board
Immersion Pro works with just about every fermenter capable of fermenting less than 30L / 8 gallons, including conicals and 5 gallon Cornelius (corny) kegs. The only fermenters incompatible with Immersion are those larger than 8 gallons, and small necked glass carboys since their opening is simply too small to fit Immersion Pro’s heat transfer rod.
Compatible with the fermenters you already own
Immersion Pro comes with two jacket options, one for flat bottom fermenters (buckets and PET carboys), and one for fermenters with legs (conicals). Just select the jacket style that matches the fermenters you would like to use with Immersion in the rewards section.
Conical Jacket or Bucket / Carboy Jacket
For most fermenters, some part will need to be drilled for either the rod or for air release. We have a number of videos and walkthroughs describing how to do this. If you prefer not to drill your own lid, have no fear! We have a plethora of drilled lids in our web store, and as a backer, we will give you a free shipping code upon the successful completion of the campaign so you can add whatever lid or drilled fermenter you wish to be shipped with your Immersion Pro.
Lids available for purchase on the BrewJacket.com store
We love our original Immersion owners and Kickstarter backers. Their support has helped us get to where we are today, and without them, we simply would not be here. We are offering all the
Easily upgrade your existing Immersion to an Immersion Pro
Immersion Pro Unit with selectable temperature format (F and C)
Anodized Heat Transfer Rod
Insulated Jacket for Carboys/Buckets or Conicals
Drilled Stopper, sleeved grommet, one-way co2 release valve (all the hardware you need to adapt your own fermenter, minus the drill bit)
Universal Power Supply (CE / UL): 100v-240v, 50/60hz with cord for the country Immersion is being shipped to. If you need a different style cord, please just email us
Getting Started Guide