When Quality Matters.
Hi, I'm Dave.
I founded iKegger with my best mate, Oner.
We designed the products, built this website and answer your questions online.
That's me getting married in June 2024, the most important day of my life. As you can see, I trusted iKegger products to deliver perfect drinks, cold all day, to my best friends, family and in-laws.
Here's why I trust our mini kegs and not others.
iKegger Quality vs Copycat Prices
Price is always going to be a primary driver in people's purchasing decisions.
But you've also problably heard that a rich person buys a $300 pair of shoes that last a lifetime.
A poor person buys a $100 pair of shoes every year for their lifetime.
iKegger sells products that will last a lifetime, that we personally designed, and use everyday ourselves, with local warranty and support.
Copycat kegs will either never work as advertised and get thrown in the back of a cupboard in frustration, or you will come to us to get parts to make them useable.
Copycat brands steal our pics as they have never even used the products they sell >>>
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iKegger @ Coogee Beach 2017
A perfectly poured dark beer, using an iKegger stainless tap (2) and high quality regulator (1). Both are removable with a quick connect system for easy transport and storage so the tap isn't accidently bumped on the way to the beach, filling the back seat with beer.
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Amazon Copycat Brand 2024
Superimposed image of keg with a chrome brumby tap (2) and a cheap, inaccurate regulator (1) that would not allow you to pour a beer properly (especially as there is no gas bulb installed). Also they aren't removable so bumping in transport is guaranteed.
What You DON'T WANT from a mini keg.
- Taps that stick shut and grow mould / bacteria inside them. (Brumby style taps)
- Kegs that have to be kept upright in your fridge, so you have to remove shelves to be able to fit them. (Non-removable tap and regulator)
- Gas regulators that are dangerous, potentially causing injury with no-one to get compensation from. (drop-shipped with no safety features).
- Regulators that simply don't work, leaving you with flat & lifeless or frustratingly foamy drinks. (poor quality that don't maintain set pressure).
- Taps that constantly get bumped, spilling drinks everywhere, or ones that just drip all the time.
- Paying your hard-earned dollars for a system that is limited to only one type of drink.
- Being stuck using only one gas source with your keg, making it expensive & inconvienient to use daily. (can only use one specific size of gas bulb).
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With no way to fill these kegs without oxygen contact beer will NOT LAST A WEEK.
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Fake image, this would be a foamy mess at the speed the liquid is supposedly flowing.
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Very cheap regulator that doesn't regulate. It's also upside down & no gas.
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Same images used by different companies, with the same mistakes.
What You DO WANT from a mini keg
- An easy to use tap, that never sticks or grows mould and the flow speed adjusts intuitively depending on how hard you press the button.
- A design that pours just as well lying down as it does upright so it can slot into a fridge shelf.
- A high quality, accurate and safe gas regulator that can use both CO2 for carbonated drinks and Nitrogen for coffee and cocktails. It can also use larger gas sources like swappable SodaStream and refillable CO2 bottles.
- Integrates perfectly with existing gear like kegerators and homebrew equipment.
iKegger Is A Labour Of Love
Mini kegs are our passion, it's as simple as that. No one else on the planet knows mini kegs like us.
We designed the original iKegger in 2015 and have used them every day ourselves since then. Over the 9 years since the original, we've expanded it's capabilities and performance using our 1st hand knowledge, combined with the feedback of over 40,000 customers. Then when we couldn't take it any further with alterations, we designed the 2.0 Tap system from scratch to have all the features we wanted.
That is what made the iKegger 2.0 the easy-to-use, robust, compact, and versatile device that it is today.
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Copy-Cat Mini Kegs >>
Cheap mini kegs use chrome Brumby style (rear-sealing) taps that can't be removed without losing gas or spilling liquid.
- The inside of these taps dries out and becomes sticky. Often the tap will get stuck closed if left for more than 24 hours without cleaning, and will grow mould inside within a couple of days.
- The chrome coating comes off.
- The internal surfaces are rough, which causes foam when pouring.
- You will constantly bump the tap accidentally spilling drinks.
- You have to take out shelves in your fridge to store the keg upright as they can't lie down ever.
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iKegger 1.0 Mini Keg System >>
Our original mini kegs used stainless steel taps that seal at the front and included valves so it can be removed at any point for storage and transport.
- doesn't get sticky or grow mould as there is no air inside.
- The latest version allowed pouring with the keg lying down but needed assembly first.
- Had a flow control lever so you can always get a good pour.
- The tap and regulator clicked on an off in seconds so you could always transport and store without fear of spilling constantly.
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iKegger 2.0 Mini Keg System
The best mini keg system was designed from scratch to address all problems.
- Full stainless steel construction with no external cavity, no mould, no sticking.
- The tap spout is removeable and the regulator clicks on and off as needed.
- The tap system is barely larger than a screw cap for compact and easy storage and transport.
- With a quick twist of the spout it can be used with keg lying down or upright.
- The push button tap has a simple to use one-handed flow control inbuilt, simply press the button harder to pour faster.
The iKegger range has been continuously improved using 9 years of R&D and 40,000 customers feedback. No company on earth has more experience or passion when it comes to mini kegs.
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The 1st iKegger System (2015)
You'll notice the original iKegger mini keg has all the things we've warned about above!
- It was the 1st system we designed, and we only ever made 1 batch of them.
- It had a brumby style tap that couldn't be removed.
- It had a barrel style, aluminium regulator that wasn't accurate enough for getting consistent levels of carbonation or foam, but was the best of the hundreds we tested prior to launching.
- This was because of all the things we learned immediately when we started using them regularly, and talking to our customers about their experiences with them.
- This system has been widely copied and sold by companies ever since who don't care if it works well or not. They just know that they can get them cheap from copycat chinese manufacturers.
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The 2nd iKegger System (2016)
We drastically improved the 1st model with a detachable tap and high quality regulator.
- We combined components already used in homebrew keg systems with some custom made adapters and connections.
- We worked with manufacturers to design a vastly improved regulator that was as accurate and reliable as any full size ones on the market. It had a safety burst valve and we printed serial numbers on each to track any batch issues in manufacturing.
- It did the job well, but didn't look as sleek as what we wanted, and the tap was still a brumby style one although made of stainless and with a smooth internal surface for non-foamy pouring.
- Again many companies have copied this design but use cheap and nasty regulators that will nd up pouring foam or flat drinks more often than not.
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The 1st iKegger Nitro System (2017)
We began testing with nitro stout then experimenting with nitro coffee and cocktails.
- There wasn't a mini regulator that could deal with nitrogen pressure so we began work on one but in the meantime this system simply injected a whole bulb at once in the same way a cream whipper gun does.
- This worked well for nitro coffee but wasn't ideal for espresso martinis as the pressure in the keg changed as you poured the drinks, meaning the foam level was inconsistent and hard to create recipes for.
- This is also when we started using forward sealing taps, that don't dry out and get mouldy inside / stick shut.
- This is also the year we released 4L insulated kegs and 5L single wall kegs.
- In 2018 after a lot of trial and error in manufacturing we released the first 5L double-wall vacuum insulated kegs.
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The iKegger 1.0 (2018-Current)
This was actually a series of improvements over years of testing that resulted in a package we ended up calling the iKegger 1.0, after we developed the 2.0.
- The tap became a full stainless steel, forward sealing tap with flow control lever. We tested ones from Perlick, Intertap and Nukatap along with others but ended up making our own due to various issues with them all (bad threads, plastic internal parts, drips and leaks etc).
- We developed a right angle steel connection so the system looked a lot sleeker (and we were confident enough of those to give them a 5 yr warranty).
- We later added a straight adapter for the tap, a one way valve for the regulator and a weight for the diptube so the keg could be used lying down.
- We also inlcuded a stout spout for the tap and made it possible to switch from the CO2 regulator to the nitro injector on the same system.
- This gave the iKegger 1.0 most of the features we'd been working towards for years but even though we supplied the tool to swap between CO2 & Nitro setups we wanted it be be simpler and easier.
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The USB iKegger Tap (2022-2024)
This was a very popular tap and by far the simplest to use. Just push the button and it pumped air into the keg to push out your drink. No regulator, no tap, no gas bulbs.
- But it had some issues and didn't live up to the quality we expect of our products. We ended up stopping production till we can improve the design.
- While we said that you shouldn't immerse the tap in water (it had a battery, pump, circuit boards etc in it) it's hard to expect a tap not to get liquid spilled onto it and this caused corrosion internally.
- Also when using sticky drinks like juices and sodas if the liquid ran down the button stem it could cause it to start getting stuck, a problem we didn't want to go back to having again!
- It was very popular though and we found that our range of customers grew a lot (from almost 100% 35+ year old men drinking beer, to a whole range of people using it for cold brew coffee, cocktails, teas and all sorts of experiments as well as beer.
- It was also perfect for events where people would be pouring their own drink with no practise or instruction, so it needed to be intuitive.
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The iKegger 2.0 (2023-Current)
This was the culmination of all our previous products. We took all the things we had on our wish list and designed a completely new tap system from scratch. Then ran a pre-sale launch on Kickstarter to get the inital funding to start manufacturing. It hit 10x the goal, raising $250k in 3 weeks.
- It removed nearly all the adapters, joins and issues with traditional style taps and replaced them with a push button that allows you to vary the flow speed depending on how hard you press. Super intuitive and easy to master.
- It's designed to pour and store both vertically and horizontally by simply twisting the spout on the tap.
- The tap has it's internal cavity inside the keg, so there is no sticking, or mould or bacteria growth.
- The tap haas been tested for hundreds of hours with every drink we could think of so that it both pours beer without foaming, and espresso martinis with perfect foam.
- The regulator can use both CO2 and nitrogen gas bulbs, as well as virtually any other gas bottles up to full size ones you'd get at a pub.
- It fits any of our kegs from 2L up to 10L meaning you can use it for 2L of cocktails or coffee one day, then 10L of beer for a weekend away.
- The spout and regulator can be removed if needed and the whole system completely integrates with existing kegerators, home bars and homebrewing gear.