In the never-ending quest to keep beer geeks happy, the method of dispensing freshly brewed beer is coming into question.
Breweries are popping up everywhere, but not all of them offer bottled or canned versions of what might be your favourite beer, which means your options are often only growlers or kegs—both of which have their drawbacks. While some people love their growlers, others—including some brewers—hate them. The problem being that the lifespan of beer in a growler is incredibly short; depending on how it is filled, it can last as little as a few hours. And realistically, once you pop the top, you’ll need to drink it all. Depending on the situation, sometimes, this just doesn’t work.
The alternative is to buy a keg. And of course, you’ll need to invest in an expensive and space-consuming, dedicated keg fridge (affectionately known as a kegorator). Not the worst thing in the world to have in the house, but for many situations, this isn’t realistic either.
That’s why the Synek Draft System is currently being crowd-sourced on Kickstarter. This system claims to end all of your beer-dispensing woes. How does it do this? Great question. Here’s how it works.
First, assuming your local micro-brewery, pub, or purveyor of fine ales is cool with filling up the system (there are some legalities here that might make that difficult), you simply fill up your Synek Cartridge with fresh beer from a keg, a tap, or a brewery’s finishing tank. This is done using a simple adapter to ensure the beer stays carbonated and doesn’t oxidize. Or, if you’re a homebrewer, you can pour your latest concoction into the cartridge, then force-carbonate it with the Synek system.
Then you put the cartridge in your Synek Box and this box then goes into the Synek dispenser, which will keep your beer cold anywhere there’s an electric outlet. From there it’s like having your very own beer tap wherever you go.
Self-touted as “the Keurig of beer,” the bag and the inner box are both recyclable and the whole system is available on Kickstarter for $299. They’ve raised more than double the $250,000 they requested, so it’s looking like people are definitely interested in the idea of a home beer draft system. (One potential drawback is that the cartridge only holds eight pints of beer.)
You can check out syneksystem.com to see if it’s one of those gadgets you simply must have.
