This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

TrailKeg 1 Gallon Pressurized Growler

I abandoned bottling quite a while ago for the same reason so many do- kegging is so much easier. And draft beer is much more rewarding/special than bottles when drinking at home, or hosting a party. Of course taking that beer to a party isn’t as simple as grabbing a few bottles and heading out the door, though. But like every problem in life that presents itself, solutions are found.

At breweries, their solution is the growler. You fill up your half gallon glass jug with your favorite beer, they put a lid on it, and you take it home. But this has limitations. Akin to pouring a glass of beer and then setting it in the fridge to drink later, beer in growlers lose carbonation and go stale tasting after a few days. The solution to this problem is the pressurized growler.

TrailKeg makes pressurized growlers. They come in half gallon and one gallon size. The half gallon is smaller and lighter, but only nets you about 4 beers. That works if you’re taking a beer to share with a friend or offer small tastings at a party. But the full gallon growler with its 8 beers is a much more social size. You’re obviously not going to fuel the whole party with that, but when the host tells you to bring a 6-pack of your favorite beer to share, you get bonus points.

What makes pressurized growlers “pressurized” is the fact that they have ports on them to let you pressurize with small CO2 cartridges. The small 16 gram cartridges contain enough CO2 to keep your beer pressurized and dispense all of your beer. Effectively, they turn your growler into a mini portable keg. The mini CO2 regulator has a tiny pressure gauge, and after you hook it up, you turn a pressure adjustment knob to dial in the serving pressure you want.

PerfectPour Dip TubePerfectPour Dip Tube Opening Comparison

And speaking of serving pressure, TrailKeg has an optional add-on accessory which was a dip tube with what they call a PerfectPour, which seems to be unique in the industry. It’s a cylindrical length of silicone that slides on over the bottom of their regular dip tube, and has a really small opening in it. With such a small hole, you have to be certain your beer doesn’t have hop bits floating around in it, but the concept solves a common problem on these small pressurized growlers. In the keg you probably carbonate at 10 psi or higher, but if you go over 5 psi in these growlers you get a foamy mess. With the PerfectPour restriction of the small hole, you can dispense out of your growler at the same pressure as you carbonate in your keg. No compromise.

Since your “mini keg” isn’t in your kegerator, it will get warm just sitting on the counter or tabletop. So TrailKeg made their growler insulated, by making it double-walled with an air cavity in between. As you may or may not know, air is an excellent insulator. For it to be effective, you have to trap the air and not let it move around, which is what you get when you hear “double walled insulated”. By trapping the air in between an inside layer (where your beer is) and an outside layer (where the warm air is trying to ruin your beer), you get great insulation. TrailKeg says their design keeps your liquid inside cold for 24 hours.

In transport mode

To get the cold beer out of this growler, the same lid that has the CO2 port also has a ball lock disconnect post, just like a Corny keg. This lets you keep it well sealed to avoid accidental spillage when transporting it to your party, and then you just pop on the ball lock fitting and are ready to go. Within the package that comes with the lid, TrailKeg has a cool set-up with a tap directly connected to a ball lock fitting. This completes the mini keg experience with a “kegerator on the go” delivery of your draft beer direct from an actual tap.

Continue reading →

This review is by Homebrew Finds Contributor Brad Probert.  Brad is an engineer, expert homebrewer and experienced reviewer.  Grab a link to Brad’s website at the end of this review.

Weekend Brewer 5L Mini Keg Growler

You might wonder what a “Mini Keg Growler” is. The name tells you that it’s for draft beer. The Weekend Brewer obviously came up with that name as an indication of the melding of two functions together. One is the transport of draft beer from point A to point B- Growler. The other is using it to store [small amounts of] beer for dispensing in a draft system- Mini Keg.

Size comparison vs a 1 gallon milk jug

The 5L Mini Keg Growler is about the size/proportions of a gallon milk jug. It has a small screw-on lid with a silicone seal, for use as a growler. It’s made of stainless steel to make it much more durable than a glass growler. It’s not insulated, which has the drawback of not being able to keep itself cold sitting out on the counter. However, by not having a double wall construction with a barrier of air in between, that means its overall size is smaller and hence much friendlier to sit inside a refrigerator or cooler. To get something in this size in an insulated configuration, you’d have to decrease the amount of beer you could fit in. So they decided that bigger is better. There is a neoprene sleeve you can buy as an add-on if you want to go that route.

Get The Gear, Review Continues Below

• The Weekend Brewer 5L Mini Keg with Ball Lock Tapping System Stainless Steel
• Micro CO2 Mini Regulator Keg Charger for Threaded Cartridges (0-30 PSI)
• The Weekend Brewer Ball Lock Cornelius Keg Beer Line Assembly
• 5L Premium Craft Beer Tower by Spotted Dog Company – combo from the same parent company, includes a different lid and faucet assembly

To use as a Mini Keg, they sell lids that have dispensing hardware built into them for putting CO2 in and getting beer out. The most keg-like of these lids is a small stainless steel machined lid that screws in to replace the regular lid, and has two ball lock posts and Pressure Relief Valve. Yes, exactly like your Corny Keg. With the ball lock fittings, you can stick it in your kegerator and hook up your normal gas and liquid lines to use it for small volume brews (5 Liters is just over 1.3 gallons).

Growler with Ball Lock Lid InstalledMicro CO2 Regulator 30 psi Gauge

Being smaller than a full-sized homebrew keg, you can more easily take it with you to a party and hook up various mobile options to supply CO2 in and get the beer out. The micro regulator they sell screws onto a threaded gas ball lock disconnect and then you can attach various size CO2 cartridges. It has adapters so it can take 3/8” threaded 16-gram cartridges, or the larger 5/8” threaded 74-gram cartridges. The 16 gram size has plenty of CO2 for dispensing 5L of beer. But it can also be handy to have the flexibility of using the regulator together with a Corny keg if you’ve got bigger plans.

Hands on Review

The growler has a brushed stainless external surface to help it stay looking good and not be prone to smudging and fingerprints, and it looked good. The opening size of the growler seemed a bit on the smaller size when it came to washing it out afterwards and being able to do a good visual inspection inside, but as a trade-off, the smaller size made it much more manageable when using it as a growler and trying to pour beer directly from it into a glass.

The dual ball lock top was excellent. This provides a great amount of flexibility in options for how to get CO2 in, and how to get the beer out. Notably, if you’re going to do a fill/vent cycle a few times with CO2 to reduce Oxygen in the headspace, you can kill a 16 gram cartridge pretty fast (learned through personal past experience). Having the option to just hook this up to my keezer CO2 bottle supply, I was able to work through this and keep the small cartridge CO2 just dedicated to serving beer at the party. And I’m not a 1-gallon batch brewer, but if you were, this dual ball lock lid lends itself to the various different low oxygen closed transfer processes out there.

Picnic Tap and Liquid Ball Lock in Dispense Kit

I did have some issues with air pickup in the dip tube while dispensing. I was running a lower pressure of about 4 psi, but the beers were coming out about 2/3 – 3/4 foam. I tried using different dispensing options like a long run of tubing with a picnic tap, but still had issues. If I ran a very low pressure of 1-2 psi, I could get the foam down to a manageable ~20-25%, with a very patient pour. However, I found I could eliminate the foaming issue by replacing the harder plastic pick-up tubing inside with a softer silicone tubing. The silicone was able to conform more to the fitting on the inside of the lid and make a better seal, preventing it from sucking in air on its way out of the growler. I highly recommend you go this route (I passed this suggestion/finding along to the owners of Weekend Brewer, and they were going to explore this more, as well).

Conclusions

Overall, the Weekend Brewer Mini Keg Growler creates an interesting proposition for those that are looking to get into 1-gallon batch brewing, but want to keep their current kegerator/keezer set-up. And the versatility of the double ball-lock lid provides lots of options to allow you to dual-purpose these kegs and take them with you, as well as use them as low oxygen fermentation or transfer vessels.

Get the Gear:

• The Weekend Brewer 5L Mini Keg with Ball Lock Tapping System Stainless Steel
• Micro CO2 Mini Regulator Keg Charger for Threaded Cartridges (0-30 PSI)
• The Weekend Brewer Ball Lock Cornelius Keg Beer Line Assembly
• 5L Premium Craft Beer Tower by Spotted Dog Company – combo from the same parent company, includes a different lid and faucet assembly

Also: Kegerator Tips & Gear | Keg Repair Part #s | Recent Keg Finds

Our Top Draft Resources!

More Photos

Double Ball Lock Lid- InsideMicro Regulator Customizable Adapter for Different CO2 Cartridges Mini Keg Growler Screw-on Lid with Silicone Seal Ring

More Growler Reviews!

Convert Standard Growlers to Swing Top!

Growler Tips!

Growler Tips & Resources:

• Tips and Gear for Growler Filling
• Growler Reviews
• Convert Standard Growlers to Swing Top

Special Thanks to The Weekend Brewer for providing the unit used for evaluation in this review.

By Brad Probert.  Check out Brad’s website – beersnobby.com

pinned

This post may contain affiliate links. We may make a commission when you use our links. This will never cost you extra. Thank you for supporting Homebrew Finds!

review:growler5lwebrewer