After attending the Twissup in Burton Upon Trent (2010) I was sent a demonstration of the Tap A Draft Coors Home Draft system (see the post by Andy) and at the time we speculated that this would be great for homebrew if the CO2 canister could be replaced. However, this particular Coors system was designed to be recycled and it is manufactured for single use only.
Just before Christmas I started to look at options for storing my homebrew as it quickly became apparent that cleaning and bottling with 500ml glass bottles wasn’t exactly a quick process. Most home brewers opt for a cornelius keg to store and serve up to 37 litres of beer, but I didn’t have the space to store one of these and also wanted something smaller that could be moved around easily. I literally stumbled upon the Tap A Draft ibrew Stout Starter Kit online at Wilko.com and instantly recognised the bottles. I was also wanting to supplement my all grain brew days with a quick malt extract kit so at £55 for everything required (including 40 pints worth of ingredients) this seemed like a great place to start.
When the ibrew kit was delivered I was pleasantly surprised to see that the draft part of the system is an original Tap-A-Draft item from Colorado, USA. This kit seems to be quite popular in the US with many images on Google, but surprisingly I found that the homebrewers that I chatted with in the UK had not seen it before. The main difference is that the dispensing head is designed to use 2 x 8g CO2 cartridges rather than the one 16g that I had used in the past.
I got to work over the Christmas period and made the first 20 pint batch from the kit …
After sending a few pictures and video to twitter, I struck up an email conversation with Tap-A-Draft and asked a few questions:
- I was given a review item from Coors a few years ago, could I reuse it?
- When screwing on the bottle, the “feet” do not align on the base, thus the bottle rolls if not using the drip tray – is this normal?
- The bottles I have, have round bottoms and will not stand upright for fermenting – is this normal?
The response:
The feet on the bottle is normal to be off with the white Tap-A-Drafts, because they are designed to go with our current 16-gram model that has one extra thread in the neck. So, the feet actually aligns with our black 16-gram model.
The rounded bottoms are correct. I know it’s a pain to have to prop them up when fermenting, but there are several reasons for the round bottoms. The main reason is the durability of the bottle. Since you are familiar with the Coors unit, which had feet on the bottle, over time the plastic deteriorates and will rupture. It’s VERY good you did NOT keep and reuse the Coors unit, as it is designed for a single use only! You would have lost your beer with a bottle rupture. The “pedaloid base” has too many variable in the plastic to be consistently used with our pressurized system. We have not had a single rupture with the rounded based bottles, and they will last for years with proper cleaning and care.
The second reason for the rounded base is that it is less likely the customer will have the bottle in the incorrect position when engaging the CO2. The bottle should be horizontal when a cartridge is pierced. CO2 is actually in a liquid form inside the cartridge. If the bottle is vertical, the cartridge is then horizontal and the liquid CO2 might have time to “pour” out of the cartridge before turning into gas when mixed with the air and temporarily “freeze” the regulator in the Tap-A-Draft. This basically wastes a cartridge.
On the back of this email I asked if I could be sent a 16g tap for testing purposes and they kindly agreed.
Pouring using the dual 8g cartridges …
The 8 gram CO2 cartridges are easy to obtain in the UK, but the 16 gram (food grade) cartridges are more difficult. Both sizes are coming in at a similar cost of 50p per 8g and £1 per 16g.
It’s important to note that there is a big difference between using the CO2 to maintain the freshness and dispense the hombrew and using CO2 to force carbonate your beer. The cost per pint of your homebrew would considerably go up when attempting to force carbonate with this system.
Screengrab from www.wilko.com …
Bottom line is that for £45 you can have a system that will store 40 pints of conditioned and easily dispensed homebrew. Cleaning and sterilising is simple and each unit is small enough to fit in the fridge. It’s pretty impressive when you roll up to a friends house with 10 pints under your arm 🙂
I gone did a post about Tap-A-Draft conditioning and serving #homebrew http://t.co/LYZIh016gf
— Richard Mackney (@RichardMackney) March 26, 2014
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View all of the pictures of my garage brewery on flickr
Michael Lee says
25th January 2015 at 9:41 amRichard, where can you get the 16gm injectors from? All the current UK ones are for 8gm only.I have found an injector system on ebay that uses a bigger Co2 bottle but it only fits the bigger system. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
Mike Lee
Richard Mackney says
3rd February 2015 at 1:03 pmHi Mike, I got the 16g tap direct from Tap A Draft http://www.sturmanbg.com/tap-a-draft/purchase . But to be honest, the 16g cartridges are not that easy to get hold of so It might be worth sticking with the 8g tap. http://www.co2cartridges.co.uk/ or http://www.stonehelm.co.uk/ have the 16g cartridges if you do manage to get a 16g tap.
Jimjim says
6th February 2015 at 5:18 pmHi Richard,
Thanks for this article. Could you explain the following a little more?
“Both sizes are coming in at a similar cost of 50p per 8g and £1 per 16g but at this point it’s important to note that there is a big difference between using the CO2 to maintain the freshness and dispense the hombrew and using CO2 to force carbonate your beer. The cost per pint of your homebrew would considerably go up when attempting to force carbonate with these small canisters.”
According to your numbers, the 8g canisters contain half the CO2 but cost half as much. So I would naively expect the cost of force carbonating to be the same, regardless of whether one use 8g or 16g canisters – the price per g of CO2 is the same. Does force carbonation with smaller canisters require more CO2 for some reason?
I generally bottle, but I’m interested in a small scale force-carbonation solution for taking homebrew to picnics, parties etc. So I’d probably only be doing one cask per brew and bottling the rest.
Richard Mackney says
6th February 2015 at 5:42 pmHi Jim, sorry for the confusion as it’s a comment about the difference between CO2 to maintain the freshness/dispense and CO2 to force carbonate rather than the sizes.
So when I just use CO2 to push the beer out it’s fine. But when I make the beer cold and shake it to get the CO2 into the beer then it’s time for many more cartridges to be used and becomes a bit expensive.
When my beer is bottle conditioned in the tap a draft then it doesn’t need any extra CO2 to dissolve into it, it just uses the CO2 to fill the void and keep it fresh.
I hope that clears it up.
Jimjim says
6th February 2015 at 5:55 pmAh, that makes perfect sense now I reread. Thanks!
johney o dea says
14th March 2016 at 5:42 pmhi i bought a tap a draft a few months ago that used 16 gram cateriges was only after i bought it i relised nearly imposible to 16 gram cateriges here in ireland so i was stuck with my system which i couldient use and wasient very happy i can tell you then i purchesed some 8 gram cat and came up with a way of injecting it into the draft bottle get some 5 euro coins or simeler just put them inside the gas container then insert the co2 cat inside and screw if it dosent pierce put another coin and screw again usualy takes about 6 coins its trial and error at this stage as some coines are thicker then other when you finaly pierce the pet bottle and your happy that it tightens nicely leave it in till its all used and when take the the co2 cat out glue all the coins together for a very solid unit hope this helps someone who might have the same problem ..ps be carefull when changing the co2 that the little black washer that seals the co2 canst dosent pop out and end up loosing
martin davies says
18th November 2016 at 4:32 pmI’ve had the 8g tap a draft for a few years now. also stumbled on it at Wilko.
My preferred method now is to condition in 2l soft drink bottles, then chill these really cold and pour into the tap a draft.
This will dispense the lot at room temperature. If I chill it when pressure drops I can pour in another 2 litres and its ready to go again.