Turn the tap on and off fully. Flip the tap decisively when turning on and off so the beer can flow as intended and you don’t get excess froth. The Sub, for instance, requires very little cleaning; just mopping up a bit of condensation that forms in the barrel.

Complete with a removable drip dray to help prevent spills; this home draught machine is perfect for drinks any social occasion. Rather, the idea of a home beer dispenser like this isn’t a particularly compelling one. It’s more complicated than one expects it to be; it’s also expensive, and it makes little sense to put a keg with its own dispenser... in a dispenser.Since we tested it, the Pinter has upgraded to a new Active Pour Tap which 'serves quality pints, just like in the pub'. It contains a chamber in which you sit a ubiquitous five-litre keg and an array of connectors and cleaning items, along with a handful of mini gas bottles and a handy drip tray. The first beer poured out a bit “lively” as they say in the industry, but after that, it came out very easily and made us look like a professional. Prepare your chosen beer in the dispenser, ensuring it's at the optimum drinking temperature for a crisp finish. Each type of beer requires a slight variation in the chill, so get prepared and know your temps. For example, an IPA excels at around 5 degrees Celsius. Grab your pint glass and chill it, either in the freezer or run it under a cold tap. The kegs for this machine are 2 litres - which is around 3.5 pints - so you don't need to be throwing a huge party to justify firing it up.

It goes without saying you’ll need to select your chosen dispenser from one of our favourites below, but you’ll also need to get the right beer to slot into your dispenser that suits your beer tastes. Many of the more expensive options take kegs directly from brewers (often called kegerators) that are pressured and will shoot out the golden nectar for you, complete with microfoam heads right in your own home, but others just need beer cans or bottles to be slotted or poured in. We all like a beer at home too — a bag of cans or a few bottles are all well and good — but it’s not the same as a proper pub-pulled pint. That’s why the home dispenser has become increasingly popular. For beer enthusiasts, it should go alongside the coffee machine or kettle. One of those absolutely essential appliances that every kitchen needs. While the keg and beer range on offer with the PerfectDraft Pro may be the same as the previous model, the system has been redesigned to deliver an improved beer-drinking experience. Most importantly, the static 3ºC cooling has been replaced with a thermostat, so different beers can be kept at different temperatures. Want to brew and drink an ale that Bilbo Baggins and Co would be happy with? Then look no further than the Pinter 2, a proper barrel of fun (and alcohol) to elevate your session with mates.Boasting a sleek design, this chilled draught beer tap is compatible to use with universal carbonated and non-carbonated 5-litre kegs. The PerfectDraft and Krups The Sub machines have an internal pump for example that pumps out the beer from your keg so it doesn't need any CO2 capsules. We also liked the easy-to-read temperature display on the front and the indicator that tells you how full your keg is. Once you open the keg, you have 30 days to consume - but you’ll have to keep the machine plugged in.

Any beer in the keg will stay fresh for 30 days after your first pour, so there's plenty of time to work through a keg if you're going at it alone.And each keg is good for around nine pints, so it's great value for money. Oh, and the beer that comes out is absolutely delicious. Consider yourself a bona fide beer aficionado? If you know your IPAs from your stouts, chances are you've considered setting up an at-home bar of some sort to enjoy your brews away from the local watering hole. It should go without saying that tabletop beer dispensers are growing in popularity – much to your local barkeep's chagrin – and even if the weather is winding down to winter and BBQ season is over, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good sup from the comfort of your own sofa. Just take a look at the wealth of beer advent calendars to see the truth of that statement. Salter recommends that you pre-chill your kegs to help. That sounds fine in practice, but since kegs are designed to last for up to 30 days, there’s a fairly short window in which to drink the contents of the keg – unless you’re having a party, that is. The PerfectDraft system will cool your beer to 3ºC for the full life of the keg. Introducing the super sleek and stylish draught beer dispenser from Salter Professionals. Suitable and compatible with universal 5L kegs such as Heineken, this beer dispenser allows you to create tasty frothy beer from the comfort of your home as Co2 cannisters are provided. With a mains operated and manual function, this easy-to-use beer dispenser will be even easier to clean with the removable drip tray to wash and return, ready for a fresh beverage.

The instructions were the most confusing of the ones we tested though, as some of the diagrams were a bit difficult to understand. Fear not, there are plenty of affordable, budget-friendly options to choose from online, including your favourite - or next favourite - beer. It'll take a while to get your canisters to the correct pressure and to cool your beer, but the process doesn't require a lot of input from you. What is the best home beer dispenser? They loved the strong “man cave vibes” but, frankly, we were more concerned about how heavy it was to lug around.You can choose from flavours that range from dark, roasty stouts, to light and hazy tropical pales. Many of our favourite beer pumps below are part of a subscription service, meaning you can get monthly top-ups to mini-kegs or cans so you’re never short on sesh day, with the largest kegs holding eight litres or roughly 14 pints. Alternatively, you can buy your chosen poison elsewhere to keep costs down. So not only is this the only machine we tested that’s portable, but it’s also the only one that doesn’t require you to buy a specific keg. Once you’ve gone through a keg, you clean the system again. It’s a case of pumping water through the beer dispensing tap like you did when setting the beer dispenser up the first time. All of this is a lot of effort for some beer that is readily available by other means. While it would be easier for brands to list keg and dispenser capacities in pints — that’s how we like to drink it, after all — they’re measured in litres. (There’s 1.76 pints in a litre, so that’s just under two pints.) Most dispensers hold kegs of around 5 litres, though some will hold a little more or less. What types of beer do dispensers use?