Details

Category: Gear

Published: 11 February 2016

Hits: 1597

• tapadraft,
• kegging,
• on tap,

Like many homebrewers, I am planning on kegging in the future.  Don't get me wrong - I like to be able to just grab a bottle from the fridge when I am out working in the yard, but it is the one part of homebrewing that I always put off as long as I can.  I really don't mind bottling, but it is the only part I can't do when my kids are up.  They always want to help, which is great, but not so easy to bottle with them helping.  To complicate it, they typically take forever to go down for the night, so here I am stucl filling 48 bottles at 1am

Then I found the Tap-A-Draft system. Kind of like an easy start to kegging.  It consists of 6 liter bottles and a tap that fits them. Ideally you will still naturally carbonate, but you can force carb too if desired.  It uses standard CO2 cartridges, and can be converted to use a bulk CO2 tank as well.

So far it has been awesome. It took me no time to fill the three bottles, cap them and set them aside to carbonate.  One warning though.  The instructions say to carbonate laying down, in the serving position.  The problem I had, two of the three seeped a little under pressure.  There are carbonation caps available that seal better, but I did not have them on hand. 

Yes in the future I will go to the standard 5 gallon corny kegs - I just need the space and the cash to set it up the way I want. For now this is a great solution. Fits right in the fridge

I got mine at MoreBeer for about $75 and just wish I had picked one up sooner!  You can also get extra valves in case you want a few things on tap, and will need to keep a few spare C02 cartridges on hand as well - and some extra bottles can't hurt either!

-Update 2/23/2016 - One thing that I noticed is on my second bottle I appear to be losing pressure really soon - but I am not.  The CO2's still have pressure, in fact I just loaded a new one into it to be sure.  What I am noticing is that the serving pressure is very low. Two things I am going to try. First, of course, its making sure everything is clean before I tap the 3rd bottle..   And second, when I notice the pressure start to drop off I am going tolet it warm up a little and see if that makes a difference.   Maybe I am in a cold spot in the fridge, and a few degrees warmer will do the trick.   I am leaning more towards it being something that needs to be cleaned out, not letting it properly regulate the pressure.   Aside from that one minor glitch, I am more than happy with my Tap-A-Draft