Thursday, August 14, 2008

Plastic Kegs


Someone on the ever insightful AHA Tech Talk forum hipped me to Plastic Kegs America. Very, very interesting. With the price of scrap stainless and related keg theft problems I wonder if this will pick up traction in the industry. I've seen the plastic firkins around for sure, but never any plastic 1/2 bbl or sixtels.

Some random thoughts...

1) Flavor Stability - Someone has to set up a blind tasting of the same beer aged for three or four months from a stainless keg and from a plastic keg. And I would gladly offer my services on the tasting panel... just throwing it out there.

2) Physical Stability - Sure, I can imagine the right kind of plastic standing up to caustic cleaning regimens, steam sanitizing, getting banged around, etc... but what will these things look like after two or three years? Inside as well as out.

3) Just how much cheaper are they?

4) What will people steal these for? I know that the scrap isn't worth anything and they can't be used by homebrewers as kettles, but somebody will find something to do with them.

1 comment:

Greg Whitehorne said...

I represent a UK company who are due tostart manufacturing a range of plastic kegs & casks following a 2 year development propgram with Coors and carlsberg. For more information please contact me on gregwhitehorne@yahoo.co.uk