Beertender Review

Sure, this picture looks like I have it all together. Like I'm some sort of Beer God that can put things together that dispense a beverage and then consume said beverage.

The Beertender showed no such mercy.

The Beertender showed up on my doorstep with two mini-kegs, one each of Heineken and Heineken Light. It came with a bunch of different connectors for tapping the keg inside the Krups Beertender box, connectors with the kegs themselves, and a final set of connectors that were separate from everything.

It also came with a "How-to" DVD that I promptly threw away.

All of the connectors basically did the same thing. I decided that it would make the most sense to use the ones that came with the mini-keg. Why did this make sense? I don't know.

I threw one of the kegs in the fridge and plugged-in the Beertender which has a little piezo electric cooler that keeps thing frosty. I read that it worked better to have both items cold before assembly so I went that route.

The Beertender has a temperature gauge as well as a gauge that tells how how full your mini-keg is. You plop the mini-keg inside the Beertender and tap it with the provided connectors.

This is when you curl up in the fetal position and cry due to the fact that the keg is blowing up on you. Much like the bad guy picking the ornate cup in The Last Crusade, I chose poorly.

Now see, I'm not a huge fan of Heineken but I find Heineken Light utterly drinkable, so I tapped that mini-keg at the party that I was hosting. This ended in despair as the beer promptly started shooting out the top of the keg and all over the house. I grabbed it immediately and ran outside, hoping to at least water the plants.

I then realized just how much beer was going to waste and decided to put an immediate stop to it by trying to get as much of it as I could. I looked like a dog trying to get a drink of water from a fire hose.

My next logical choice was to use the tap connector that came separate from everything. This was a good choice.

The mini-keg tapped instantly and I ran it through the hose area and it was working and ready to go. I poured...well, 2 or 3 beers. Remember, not a big fan of Heineken?

I wanted to keep the Beertender for myself once I got everything working. It's elegant, easy-to-use, and keeps your beer fresh and keg-tasty for about 30 days, which is not bad at all. I pulled a beer about 3 weeks after I tapped the mini-keg and it tasted just as fresh as the first day it was tapped, not bad at all.

The Krups one is easily the nicest of the mini-keg dispensers out there and there is even a newer model out there that gives you actual numbers for temperature and percentage of your keg you have left (the one I received just has a bar meter). I saw a cheaper version at BevMo the other day that was around $90 but wasn't made by Krups and looked like it was worth about $90.

Hey, if you got the counter space and you like Heineken, this is easily the best way to get tasty Heineken product from inside a large can thing and in to your gut. It's sexy, will impress your friends, and give you a daily reminder of how cool German stuff is.

Krups Beertender - $280