http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100922006528/en/Rehrig-Pacific-Company-Introduces-PubKeg™
very cool. I wonder how much they will cost or what the cons will be.
Who cares what those cost - the real kegs will flood the market like corny kegs did. Woohoo!
The “real” kegs are worth something as scrap though… they’re going to be literally throwing these plastic ones away!
Just what we need, more trash for our “disposable throwaway society”
Interesting concept. I am partial to SS though, but I would like to try one out for grins and giggles.
That was my first thought too, actually.
Agreed. At least they’re recyclable and made from recycled materials. I don’t know how much they will be, but I can imagine a lot of breweries sticking with the SS and maybe buying a few of these for when they ship beer across the country - like to GABF for example. Brewers are cheap, I think they have to be to make money. I know one brewer who still mostly uses golden gates, and sees no reason to change. Well, I should say the owner sees no reason to change, the brewer would love to get some newer technology. ;D
I was thinking of the waste, but it’s also really a brilliant idea. The gigantic PET bottle is the disposable part right? With the potential buy-back option for the outer shell it’d be perfect and a closed loop. Someone would make a buck collecting from pubs and recycling or selling the PET bottles. There’s always a niche.
But like all new approaches it needs to become “standard” and with Sankey tap it can become something like: “We’re phasing out metal kegs. This is what you get from now on…”
I won’t get too excited just yet. It’s a 1/6 barrel keg without any other sizes available. It might replace a pony key but the 16 gallon one everyone craves will still be the old standby (for now). Besides, the big boys have very large infrastructures in place to handle the current standard kegs. This seems to be directed at the smaller local brewer looking to distribute to a smaller area without the huge expense to setup the old SS type systems.
The big boys might decide to wait and see what issues they have also. I have heard that Pepsi and Coke are backing off bag-in-box to some extent due to rodent issues. It’s a lot easier to chew through a plastic bag (or box) than a SS tank.
IMHO
Paul
Yeah, I always wonder about this sort of thing. The near-indestructible packaging was initially adopted for a reason. It’d be kind of like the army deciding to replace their humvees with ford explorers to save on cost.
That’s funny, because they kind of did for awhile.
My brother (a West Point grad) had an old jeap that the army decided should be replaced by a Chevy Bronco while he was stationed in Germany. Lordie, how he hated that Bronco. The thing got stuck if it thought about raining and it broke down all the time. He’d b!@#$ about how he could fix the jeap with a screwdriver and a pair of pliers but it took a “Certified Mechanic” to do anything on the Bronco.
He was also forced to carry a Barreta 9mm as his side arm for awhile too. After the breach broke on his 3rd one he petitioned for and received a waiver so he could go back to his Colt. So did his commanding officer.
Paul
I bought a bunch of kegs from these guys http://www.plastickegsusa.com/ - so far so good.
Did you get 1/6 th barrel kegs? How much did you pay for them?
I got forty 1/6th bbls and eight 1/2 bbls. I think the 1/6th bbls were about 80 bucks a piece. They come with a 3 year warranty that they won’t leak.
Well, here’s something to think about. The energy costs and caustic used to clean kegs may even out any environmental impacts of these being “disposable”. Also, a low end keg cleaner starts at around 6K and an automatic, 3 bay one starts at around 15K. Not to mention man hours it takes to clean kegs. It is a very attractive option to have kegs ready to fill, depending on the price.
Personally I can;t get their stupid heavy-ass sight to load on my slow-ass dial-up.
Everyone tries to justify “disposable” as being environmentally friendly and it’s always BS. Dig into the real details and reusable is better, 99% of the time.
I don’t see where I said anything was “environmentally friendly” - I said that it “may” even out when you factor in the amount of energy used to clean kegs and the amount of caustic used. It may not when you factor in the energy to recycle or manufacture. I don’t really know. I’m not sticking up for one way or the other, just offering up a different viewpoint others may not have thought about. Keg washing is certainly not “environmentally friendly”. Nor is beer brewing for that matter.
Little disingenuous there, don’t you think 
Cleaning, caustic, heck, even throw in the return transportation costs and, like he said, 99 times out of 100 “reuse” is still gonna beat “recycle” hands down.
Uhm. No. I don’t. In fact, throwing out a generic term such as “99 times out of 100” is what seems disingenuous to me. ;)
One of you two figure it out on paper and show me some figures. Just throwing out “99 times out of 100” over these here interwebs just isn’t convincing enough for me.
Regardless, I’m just playing the devil’s advocate. In reality I am a big proponent of bringing back returnable bottles and am trying to figure out a way to do this at my own brewery. But I am not closing my mind to any option that would keep me from having to wash kegs at this point. Understand this doesn’t mean I am buying them or even advocating. Only considering. High horses be damned. 