EdgeStar Deluxe Mini Kegerator

I guess I was good this year, SWMBO decided to get me the EdgeStar Deluxe Mini Kegerator & Draft Beer Dispenser as a gift and at first I was a bit skeptical. I've done a lot of reading about kegging systems, kegerators and beer taps but I've never even heard of this one before. I've seen those giant sized Heineken and Newcastle five liter beer cans at the liquor store many times but I never gave them a second glance since I hadn't heard much about them before. After giving the idea of owning yet another beer delivery system and what new possibilities it had to offer so thought I decided to keep the new beer dispenser, do a little bit of research and figure out how to use it.

EdgeStar TBC50S Deluxe Mini Kegerator and Draft Beer Dispenser

I drove over to the liquor store and picked up a five liter mini-keg of Newcastle Brown Ale to use as the first draft beer to test out my new dispenser. Once I got home with the mini-keg I put it in the refrigerator while I did a quick read of the instructions to figure out what I needed to do in order to get the setup working. To set up the dispenser for a first pour I flushed out the beer line with a dilute solution of Oxi-Clean and water by pushing a cupful through the beer line, out the tap and into cup. They give you a small plastic bottle that snaps onto the beer line connector all you do then is squeeze the bottle to force the cleaning solution, followed by clean water, through the lines and tap.

The min-keg I bought was already cold, it's recommended to refrigerate the mini-kegs for 10 hours before loading them into the dispenser because the dispenser is better at retaining the beer temperature at 38F than at cooling a warm keg down to it. Although the beer in the keg lasted only a little more than an hour it did manage to pour perfect beers at a cold temperature the entire time it sat on our counter. The real cooling capabilities test would be to plug the dispenser into a car's lighter socket for power and serve beer outdoors on a hot day.

EdgeStar 5-Liter Mini Keg Beer Dispenser Tap Conversion Kit

It seems that for such a really cool device, the design resembles that of an espresso maker, there would be more brewers committed to using the new DraughtKeg with a wider selection of beer styles to choose from.  Although I did enjoy the taste of the Newcastle Brown Ale, which was the first DraughtKeg beer I tried, so did many of the guests at my latest party. So far I've only seen Heineken and Newcastle beer packaged in the DraughtKeg but I'm already on the prowl for the other beers too, which may or may not require the optional Co2 conversion kit. And according to the Beer Tap Systems website the following beers are now being packaged in 5 liter mini-kegs using the newly patented DraughtKeg technology.

Heineken
Heineken Premium Light
Newcastle Brown Ale
Coors Light
DAB Original Lager
Spaten Premium Lager 5 Liter
Warsteiner Premium
Paulaner Hefe-weizen
Bitburger
Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale mini-kegs
Molson Canadian
George Killians
Bell’s Oberon

Having the optional mini-keg and Co2 gear gives me another reason to drive over to a local pub and have my mini-keg filled, fresh from a newly arrived 'Firkin of the days' craft beer. If the 1.25 gallons of beer seems like a lot of beer don't worry the min-kegs will keep beer fresh and ready to pour for up to a month, which is a relatively long time in beer years.

My Imported 5 Liter  Mini-Keg

So setting up and using the pressurized Heineken and Newcastle DraughtKegs was child's play but the next two items remaining for me to master are still the most challenging. Using the min-kegs and the Co2 conversion kit instead of a growler for taking home some draft beer from a local pub and using the mini-keg and Co2 conversion kit for my home brewed beers. In either case the main thing to get right will be the carbonation and Co2 serving pressures needed to pour the perfect beer.

Sanitized With 1.3 Tbsp. Priming Sugar Added

When calculating how much sugar to use to naturally carbonate the mini-kegs it's recommended to use 50% less sugar than you would normally use when carbonating a 12 ounce bottle to hit the same carbonation volume. Example: To hit 2.5 volumes of Co2 for a 12 ounce bottle using a bottling bucket filled with 5 liters of beer you would add 7.5 teaspoons of pure cane sugar to the bottling bucket and fill the bottles to about an inch below the cap. When using a single 5 liter mini-keg you would fill the keg to one inch below the top of the keg and add only 3.75 teaspoons of sugar to get the same 2.5 volumes of Co2 into solution.

Filled Mini-keg With Rubber Plug Inserted

Using a small funnel I poured 1.3 tablespoons (4 teaspoons) of pure cane sugar into each mini-keg, after first sanitizing the kegs and funnel. By adding this amount of sugar and filling the kegs what I hope to be about an inch below the top of the kegs this should give the beer between 1.8 and 2.0 volumes of Co2. From everything I've read so far about refilling the min-kegs to prevent over carbonating the beer and ending up in foamy pours. Most information I've read by homebrewers suggest starting off using half the amount of priming sugar typically used when batch priming for 12 ounce glass bottles.

Bottoms Up Brown Ale FG 1.012

I have to admit the next time I refill these min-kegs I'm ether going to give them a 10 minute soak in OneStep to reduce foaming or buy a small digital scale the reads up to 15 pounds accurately. By using StarSan to sanitize the mini-kegs this time it was nearly impossible to view how far below the top of the keg the beer level was. There was so much foam from the StarSan and the hole in the top of the mini-keg is so small that even when using a flashlight it didn't help see how high the level was getting. The best thing would be to fill the mini-keg up on a small digital scale and stop once the scale read around 10 pounds.

Bottoms Up Brown Ale First Pour

 I poured my first glass from the unit yesterday into a clean tulip glass and got quite a lot of foam in my DogFish Head Palo Santo recipe brown ale clone. The foaming issue was easily resolved by just pouring some beers and after about four pours the foaming had been reduced to normal levels. The two mini-kegs I bough cost about $22.00 apiece and they don't have a built in relief valve used to release any excess Co2 pressure that builds when naturally carbonating the beer.

Cool Looking, Compact And Quiet

When naturally carbonating the mini-kegs I added 4 teaspoons of pure cane sugar, or half the amount I would have used for 12 or 22 ounce bottles, to each 5 liter min-keg to target 2.5 volumes of Co2 and the carbonation level in the beer itself was perfect. When I get to tap my next mini-keg I'll use the piercing tube to release all of the built up Co2 pressure before hooking it up and attempting to pour a beer. I give this unit two beers up, it's a nice compact quiet unit that is very cool to look at and easy to setup and use.