So, Austin Homebrew has a nice sale on stainless forward sealing Perlick faucets. I am meticulous about cleaning anyway, so I am wondering if they are worth the cost…also the BA’s draught quality manual says that the drawback of the forward sealers is more foaming…
so, wise brethren, are the Perlicks worth the cost, and do you experience additional foaming? You see the Perlicks in all the fine establishments (ie breweries)…and that alone is pushing me towards them, but I only serve 1 beer or so a day, does stainless even matter?
I built my keezer within the last year and purchased Perlicks because of the problems I heard other faucets have with sticking, even if you clean them regularly. I can’t speak for the extra foaming though but if I pour properly it doesn’t seem to foam more than it should.
For years I avoided Perlicks because I thought they were expensive. Now they seem to be coming down in price. I recently replaced all of my old chrome and brass faucets with S/S Perlicks for half of what I paid for my original faucets. I wish I did this years ago. They do not stick and I have personally not noticed them making any more foam than my old faucets. It is nice to go to a tap I haven’t used for a week and pour a pint with no sticking. ;D
Having experienced the sticking faucets myself, I bought perlicks to rid myself of that problem. They are definitely worth the money, especially if you’re only serving 1 beer a day. That means the next day you come to your other beers on tap, or that beer, the faucet won’t be stuck. Believe me, stuck faucets SUCK.
With 6 beers on tap there was no way I drank one of each every day-I had a keg of Imperial stout that took 2 years to drink. Unless you use the faucet pretty much every day you’ll eventually have problems with it sticking. And once it’s nicely stuck it’s a real pain to get it clean again.
For now I’m using a couple Perlicks directly off the keg, using the quick disconnect adapter here:
I do notice extra foam with these, but I would suppose that’s to be expected because there’s no hose to drop the pressure. By dropping the keg pressure way down, the foaming decreases to a tolerable level, but it still takes two draws to get one beer. All that creamy foam actually helps mellow out a dark beer I made that ended up a bit too strong. Perhaps with more user training it will get better, until I get a propa system built. Maybe dial the pressure down to a slow crawl will help.
Don’t disconnect the “joy” factor either, that one gets merely by looking at them… certainly not something I ever experienced looking at a picnic tap.
IMHO THIS is when it matters the most. (having broke the Tap attachment off after having one stick.
IMHO standard taps will work extremely well for any brewpub/bar where the faucets are in more or less continuous use.
I also feel that if you don’t now, you will latter.
I don’t have much of a problem with sticky taps and I don’t have Perlicks. What I do is this: I keep the little plastic squirty tube thing that came with the taps next to the kegerator in a small cup of sanitizer. Any time I know I’m only having one pint, which is pretty much every day, right after I draw the pint I squirt a bit of sanitized water up there. No sticky taps, so far.
