Hands-on with the Tap King: is this the king of beer at home?

Beer. At home. From a keg in your fridge. For less than a hundred bucks. Could this be the dream of every ale lover?

I have a confession to make: I’ve never liked beer. I like cider, but not beer. In fact, up until this test, I didn’t like beer.

It might seem strange that a person who didn’t like beer should be reviewing the Tap King, a beer keg with replaceable beer canisters, but I found myself liking beer the more I pulled the beer from the keg, let it sit in the glass, and then let the foamy liquid make its way through my lips.

But was this because of Tap King is a genuinely good product, or because I was changing as a person, that my tastebuds were becoming more mature?

From the experience of the past few days, I suspect it was the latter, and based on what people around the office are telling me from their experiences, and based on my own newbie “hello, yes, I’m new to this whole beer drinking” thing, I can safely say that no, the Tap King isn’t fantastic.

Let me explain.

Over the past few weeks, Lion – the owners of Tooheys, Hahn, James Boag, and James Squire – have been advertising a product that allows you to store a micro keg in your fridge and pull a beer with ease.

It’s called the “Tap King,” and was built by Australian packaging company Visy after what Lion says was “two years of extensive research and refinement,” resulting in a product that is essentially the Nespresso of beer appliances.

We’re not kidding, either.

The Tap King is a plastic micro keg tap head that uses a latch system to connect to 3.2 litre bottles of beer.

There are six varieties of beer you can buy at this point, all of them owned by Lion, with XXXX Gold, James Boag’s Premium Lager, Tooheys New, Tooheys Extra Dry, Hahn SuperDry Premium Low Carb, and James Squire Golden Ale.

We were curious if cider was coming to the Tap King system, but haven’t heard back from Lion’s people yet.

Once you’ve selected your beverage, you take the bottle, pull the lid off to reveal the connections underneath, align the arrow on the back of the bottle with the arrow on the back of the micro keg tap, push it down, and pull the latch, locking the tap on the head of the beer.

From there, it’s a pretty simple operation: lie the bottle back in your fridge, chill it for between six to nine hours, and when it’s cold enough, pull yourself a beer, holding the glass at an angle. Easy.

You’ll need a decent amount of space in your fridge, mind you, as it’s a relatively large device, but we were able to take up an entire level in the GadgetGuy fridge by placing it diagonally on the shelf.

Pulling the beer is as simple as pushing against the tap with a glass held underneath.

For the Tap King, beer is made by pulling a flat beer from the bottle and mixing it with an injection of CO2, similar to what a Sodastream does, except inside a small bottle.

Do not puncture the CO2 canister. Do not state the obvious. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

In fact, every single Tap King replacement bottle contains 3.2 litres of alcohol – essentially ten 320ml drinks – with a carbon dioxide canister, and Lion includes a tool to help you remove the lid and CO2 canister for when you want to recycle the bottles. Nifty.

The most important part of the Tap King is flavour, so is it as good as a pub tap in your home?