Phillips perfect draft

[youaintseenmeright]

Hi

Just noticed the Phillips perfect draft dispenser that takes 6l aluminium barrel does anyone on here have one or looked at the barrels could these be refilled and force carbonated in some way or even primed but risk of cloudy beer I suppose the price of the full kegs are over 30 quid for 10 pints ouch

[Fil]

5l mini kegs are generally steel with a film coating.. a few hbs stock em , i got my set from candirect.com

if you search ebay for minikeg dispenser you should pick one up 2nd use for about £40, i have the Morphy Richards version.. works a treat, takes overnight (10-12 hours) to chill a warm keg down to cold (no temp control, and it can overchill imho)

grand bit of kit, only fault/feature with mine im not happy about is dropping the keg into the well of the device gripping a minikeg by its rim when full without dropping is a challenge, so i now slip the keg in a carrybag and drop that in..

[youaintseenmeright]

Thanks for the reply

How do you carbonate is it a case of priming or do you have a way of force carbonating?

[Fil]

while i think you could chill a keg down to temps suitable for pressure conditioning at the levels supplied by the 12-16gm bottles via the basic regulator. there is no capacity to vent off o2 or excess condition.

i prime and condition at room temp for a week or 2 prior to sitting to mature in the cool. the initial release from the tap will suck the sediment from the dip tube vicinity (if i have lowered the keg in place gently enough not to disturb it so it can settle while it chills)
And the first release will fill the glass with 3/4 full of foam which if left will settle to a finger or 2 of flat murky beer. so chuck it and start pouring lively pints at first (depending on how much u let it chill and how much priming sugar u add) i pour in 15-20g.

the pour is more akin to a pb than a corny, after a couple of pints u open a bit of gas up til it squeeks in and carry on pouring

and the kegs are not indistructable after 3 uses 2 of mine started to rust on the bung rim. tho i believe others have had much longer life out of their minikegs.

[hophit]

I just haven't been getting on with these minikegs. Problems I have experienced:

1) They are a pain in the prooverbial to clean, rinse and especially to dry out inside.
2) The gas is expensive
3) They are easy to dent
4) They rust as above
5) When the dispensing tap thingy is inserted, there is a slow leak of gas, so if you are not drinking it all at once, it eats gas to keep it pressurised (though I am told elswhere on here that a small amount of vaseline solves this).
6) I snapped the bloddy tube onthe dispensing tap - very easy to do.

In the end I have now reverted back to good old bottles, which is not really that time consuming in terms of sterilising now I have Startsan - no rinsing saves a LOT of time.

[daddies-beer-factory]

Never used minikegs, but following advice on here , my bottling time is pretty quick ( once I have found everything & set up ) & using starsan & the plastic caps ( drink a few, rinse & spray) its quite easy !

[oz11]

I just haven't been getting on with these minikegs. Problems I have experienced:

2) The gas is expensive
5) When the dispensing tap thingy is inserted, there is a slow leak of gas, so if you are not drinking it all at once, it eats gas to keep it pressurised (though I am told elswhere on here that a small amount of vaseline solves this).

To help with (5) (and, as a consequence, (2)), you can try getting an o-ring to fit the outside of the dip tube, and before you insert the dip tube push it tight to the top of the tube, Then when you put the dip tube in the keg this will form an air tight seal. I now do this as a matter of course and a cartridge will last for a little over 2 decently primed mini-kegs. I also buy the cartridges in bulk from this site

[Fil]

1x co2 cartridge should serve 2 minikegs, in addition to the oring try a smear of krg grease or vasaline on the tap dip tube, and or wrap a bit 0f ptfe tape tuond the ip tube neck

there are a few minikeg chiller tap machines on ebay branded carlsberg jobs..

99p and £19.99 starting bids..

[dinger44]

Hi

Just noticed the Phillips perfect draft dispenser that takes 6l aluminium barrel does anyone on here have one or looked at the barrels could these be refilled and force carbonated in some way or even primed but risk of cloudy beer I suppose the price of the full kegs are over 30 quid for 10 pints ouch

I have a Wunderbar dispenser from a few years ago. It came with two connecters. One for the phillips perfect draft 6 litre mini kegs and one for the normal 5 litre mini kegs. I dont think the phillips machine would work with the 5 litre kegs.

[kieran199]

Hello,
Registered here just to post this, I have the perfect draft system and am quite happy with it.
As I am starting home brewing again after a long pause I have managed to figure out how to refill
them.
I have built an adapter using the bottle top of a soda bottle, drilled a hole and epoxied a small aquarium
type tube, this is then zip tied to the rubber end tube of the bit that goes into the perfect draft tap part.
I can post a photo if there is interest. I then fill a soda bottle with my brew and put my diy adapter on the soda
bottle and put it on top of another perfect draft keg and sit on it. I then take another of those replaceable
tubes in the tap part and push one of the little 'buttons' to let the air out (filling the keg you actually fill a bag
inside the keg so you need to let the air between the bag and the keg out). Sitting on the soda bottle pushes
the brew into the keg. I usually wash out the keg using this system until the warm water no longer smells of beer.
I am looking to build a more permanent filling system with an old fire extinguisher and compressed air from
my compressor (with suitable filters in the air line.) and some polymoph plastic.
I do not plan to force carbonate my beer, it will have the fizz it has and anyhow, the perfect draft system works
by pushing air into the void between the keg and the bag holding the beer so it is not needed for the pour.
I am in the process of testing to see if I cannot get more bubbles into the brew in the keg itself with an extra
fermentation (a dark Belgian triple!!). It will be drunk even if this does not work.
I suspect the weakest link in this is the strength / durability of the bag inside the keg, this dictating the number of refills
(I have refilled the same keg 3 times now with an average of 5 rinses for cleaning before filling with brew of a total of about
18 refills.).
Let me know if pics of the setup are needed.
I live on the continent so I have plenty of choice as to the types of beer and the shops that stock these kegs.
Happy brewing or in this case happy refilling!
K
=)

[pablin]

Hi! Maybe its to late, but im going to buy the PerfectDraft system now, so im wondering how can i refikll the kegs. I found your explanation, but, maybe you notice that my english is not so good (im from Spain). Can you upload the pics? Thank you, and sorry for my english

[kieran199]

As I have been asked by several people for more info on how I refill the perfect draf kegs, here goes...
I would like to start off by saying that rinsing out the keg and disinfecting it several times is important. I start off with several rinses of boiling water then disinfect then several more rinses with boiling water. I use a 2 ltr soda bottle so need to do the filling procedure 3 times.

Here is a photo of the adaptor I made. Once I finish the 2nd adaptor (a wooden frame to hold everything and a pressurised vessel to push the beer into the keg) I will send on photos of that.
Here is how it works;
The no. 4 is the top of a soda bottle, the tubing is glued onto it through a hole. Make sure the glue is strong enough to hold the pressure of forcing the beer back into the keg.
No. 3 is the tubing zip tied onto the original black tubing that normally goes down the tap part (that goes on top of the keg). Make sure this is a good seal but still allows the beer to flow.
Section no. 2 is the part that goes into the keg as normal.
No 1 is a spare part that I glued onto the other part (you could use some wood or anything else but, it needs to fit into the plastic around the keg so that it pushes the little button in the centre of the keg. The outside button in the top of the keg is to release the air between the keg and the bag inside the keg (which holds the beer) and the inside button closer to the centre of the keg is used to allow the beer in or out. I should cut the top part, no.1 off a bit but I use it to push down this adaptor onto the keg.
To refill, I put my homebrew in a big soda bottle, screw on the soda bottle top and turn it upside down whilst pushing the end (section 1.1 / 2) into the keg. You might need to squeeze the bottle but the beer will only go in as fast as the air can leave the keg. You should hear a hissing of the air leaving the keg.

It is a bit of a fiddle so this is why I am building a more sturdy adaptor. I plan to use an old stainless steel fire extinguisher with an adaptor to filtered compressed air. You fill the fire extinguisher with your beer, pressurise it and push the end of this adaptor into the keg. Regulating the air pressure regulates the flow of beer into the keg.
I can send a rough sketch I drew of this idea.

[Beethoven]

Kieran, I am eager to refil kegs re pperfect draft. For some reason I can not see pictures on your post. If you still have them would you send them to my email, Jason.moseley@btinternet.