Brewbot nabs $1.5M to get more people brewing their own beer

Brewbot, the startup known for its personal beer making “robots,” has closed a new $1.5 million round of funding today to make homemade beer as common as brewing a pot of coffee.

Brewbot’s personal beer-making machine allows you to brew beer in a variety of flavors and styles. The machine takes care of the many important factors that can affect the taste of a beer, such as temperature, ingredient measurements, brewing duration, and the brew’s volume. Everything is controlled via Brewbot’s smartphone app, which also shows you all the ingredients included for each batch. And Brewbot’s machine will even let you print custom labels to slap onto bottles.

More recently, the startup revealed its plans to create an overall homebrewing community platform, along with a set of “DNA of Beer” cards (sort of like the recipe cards your Grandma uses) that people can share to duplicate a custom batch of delicious beer, as VentureBeat previously reported. Brewbot wants you to be able to recreate a local craft beer you consumed half a world away, without having to deal with laws or regulations associated with selling and shipping alcoholic beverages.

While much of its monetization strategy is still being fine tuned, Brewbot CEO and founder Chris McClelland did tell me in a previous interview that the startup is planning to make money both from the sale of its beer machines ($2,800 each) and by selling ingredients needed to recreate a specific beer from a local brewery. The startup already has a handful of local brewers signed up to participate, too.

As for the new funding, the round was led by by Bebo founder and CEO Michael Birch with participation from Bullet Time Ventures, Hallett Capital, TechStart NI, Galvanize, SparkLabs Global, and angel investor Federico Pirzio-Biroli. Founded in 2013, the Belfast, Northern Ireland-based startup has raised $3 million to date.