25 replies to this topic

[harryfrog]

So a buddy of mine was in San Diego and saw the coors light model (looks like a tap-a-draft) and brought back 2 of these containers. He accidentally left an empty one at my house the other night to show me, and I was thinking about filling it with homebrew and returning it to it's rightful owner.The top unscrewed just like a regular 2 liter soda bottle. I had to force the CO2 cartridge holder to break the tabs that prevent you from unscrewing it and hurting yourself, but it looks like I can do the following:Clean wellSanitizeFill with sugar primed homebrewLet naturally carbonateFridgerateAdd new CO2 cartridge for home dispensing.Anybody have any experience with these things?

[lowendfrequency]

What I don't understand is that if these beers are being pushed via CO2, then why do they only have a shelf life of 30 days? Wouldn't the shelf life be identical to that of an unopened beer? This makes be believe that the CO2 isn't strong enough to maintain any sort of carbonation, just enough to keep a vacuum from forming when the beer is dispensed (like a wine dispensing setup). Visions of flat, half-filled 2 liters come to mind. On the positive side, perhaps it would serve well as an affordable firkin for real ale enthusiasts who don't want to pound the whole keg in 2 or 3 days.

[harryfrog]

What I don't understand is that if these beers are being pushed via CO2, then why do they only have a shelf life of 30 days? Wouldn't the shelf life be identical to that of an unopened beer? This makes be believe that the CO2 isn't strong enough to maintain any sort of carbonation, just enough to keep a vacuum from forming when the beer is dispensed (like a wine dispensing setup). Visions of flat, half-filled 2 liters come to mind.

That's an interesting point. The Tap-a-draft has a spot for 2 CO2 cylinders. I wonder if one cartridge just isn't enough...

[HerrHiller]

I really doubt that miller is hurting.. maybe they are failing to own 20ish percent of the beer market while DFH doesnt even own a full percent, and domination is getting less and less...but id never say they are hurting...

[zymot]

I would love to see these things take off with BMC. Let the BMC drinkers finance the research, tooling, production volumes, packaging, retail support. Then BANG, craft brewers can ride in on the coat tails of the BMC success.There are not enough Sierra Nevada Pale Ale drinkers to get this off the ground by themselves. If Bud, Miller, etc can sell the idea and get volumes to where a craft brewer can offer it also, win-win all around.zymot

Edited by zymot, 07 February 2010 - 12:13 PM.

[3rd party JKor]

I really doubt that miller is hurting.. maybe they are failing to own 20ish percent of the beer market while DFH doesnt even own a full percent, and domination is getting less and less...but id never say they are hurting...

Do you know how much of the US beer market DFH owns? I don't, but I bet it's not even remotely close to one percent, maybe 0.001%? Anheuser-Busch alone produces over 1,000 times the volume of DFH.