If you drink a lot of craft beer, you’ve undoubtedly encountered the following dilemma: Either you wind up with more empty bottles than you can possibly fit in your recycle bin each week, or you get your brew by the growler and inevitably have it go flat before you finish it all. The only other options are to downsize the amount you drink (not likely) or fully commit to your craft beer addiction and buy yourself a kegerator. Neither option is particularly enticing, but thankfully somebody has cooked up an alternative solution.
Freshly launched on Kickstarter just last week, uKeg is a pressurized stainless steel growler that can hold either 64 or 128 ounces of beer (comes in two sizes), and keep it fresh for considerably longer than its average glass counterpart. How, you ask? The secret lies in the uKeg’s unique pressurization cap. Hidden inside the cap there’s a little slot designed to hold a CO2 cartridge, as well as a selector dial on the cap that allows you to regulate the amount of gas it releases. To help you get a sense of how pressurized the growler’s interior chamber is, the tap is outfitted with a brass pressure gauge.
Related: The ultimate beer chiller spins your suds down to 40 degrees in 40 seconds
Truth be told, this isn’t the first contraption in the world that helps you keep your beer from going flat. There are cheaper options available out there, but uKeg seems to have two things going for it that other products do not: durability and plain old aesthetic appeal. The double-wall stainless steel enclosure is far more durable than glass, and all the accompanying brass fittings give it a sort of steampunkish look that’s sure to turn a few heads at your local brewpub.
Unsurprisingly, the project has already blasted past its initial $75K funding goal, and is currently sitting on more than double that amount with more than 50 days left in the campaign. If you back the project now, you can lock down a uKeg for about 99 bucks. Barring any hiccups in the manufacturing process, GrowlerWerks expects to ship the first batch of uKegs to backers sometime next spring. Find out more here.
