KegWorks Blog

Take the work out of working the keg.

How much beer is left in my keg? It’s a question kegerator owners have struggled with ever since some enterprising beer lover first took a power drill to his refrigerator door.

Keeping your kegerator continuously pouring can be frustrating. You want to get the most out of your keg, but you don’t want to take a chance and have it kick in the middle of a party, during the big game or four hands into the Texas Hold’em tournament you’re hosting. You don’t want down time between kegs, but who has the space to keep a back up around? What is the average keg jockey to do?

There are commercial grade flow meters designed for bars and restaurants, which are very expensive. You can try the old bathroom scale method, at the cost of any true accuracy. Or maybe you think you can guess just by picking it up. Do yourself a favor, leave the guessing to your local weatherman and get this accurate and affordable Keg-Meter Digital Beer Monitoring System.

This nifty gadget installs easily, mounts to the outside of your keg fridge and serves a multitude of functions. Aside from its primary duty - digitally displaying the number of servings left in your keg - it also measures, in real-time, the amount of beer that has been poured and tracks fridge temperature, ensuring your beer is stored and served at the ideal temperature.

Although this monitoring system was designed with Joe Everyman’s converted refrigerator in mind, it can also be used in a more elaborate home draft system. Keep in mind it won’t work with hand pumps. The keg it’s monitoring must be pressurized. It can be set for full size kegs, pony kegs or 5-gallon kegs and comes with detailed installation instructions. Take the mystery out of when your keg will run dry – get your Keg-Meter today!

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The Pegu is a gin-based cocktail that was the signature drink of Burma’s Pegu Club, a social club written about by the likes of Rudyard Kipling. The club was located just outside Rangoon. The recipe appeared in The Savoy Cocktail Book of 1930 by Harry Craddock and was called The Pegu Club Cocktail. The Pegu is best served in a chilled glass and is considered a hot weather drink. Its taste is reminiscent of grapefruit and some bartenders will garnish it with a twist of grapefruit peel or slice of fresh grapefruit although it is commonly served with a slice of lime to compliment the lime juice in the drink.

Pegu Club Cocktail Recipe 1 dash Fee Brother’s Orange Bitters 1 dash Fee Brother’s Old Fashioned Bitters 1 tsp fresh lime juice 1 oz orange Curacao 2 oz gin Shake with ice. Strain into a 3 oz cocktail glass and enjoy.

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It’s summer time, and for a lot of beer drinkers that means it’s Hefe-Weisse time. I am a huge fan of wheat beers all year long, but I have to agree there is something particularly refreshing about a nice tall Weizen glass of Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse on a hot summer afternoon. Most people go for the far more commonly available light version, Hefe-Weisse Hell, which is outstanding, but being a fan of malty beers I prefer the dark or Hefe-Weisse Dunkel version. Like its lighter cousin, Hefe-Weisse Dunkel is top fermented ale made with wheat malt from which the yeast is not filtered out.

I began drinking Franziskaner while on a trip to Munich after college. I knew about wheat beer, but had never had Dunkel Weis, and once I did I was hooked on the dark stuff, and I especially enjoyed Franziskaner’s Hefe-Weisse Dunkel. Within a few months of returning home, I was pleasantly surprised to find the beer with the jolly monk on the label was beginning to show up at beer stores and some supermarkets with good beer sections. I was even happier to see that the dark version often appeared next to it’s lighter counterpart on store shelves. Franziskaner is most commonly available in the European size 16.9 oz (.5 liter) brown bottles. I have seen the Hefe-Weisse in 12 oz green bottles, but sometimes it has a slightly skunky taste from the green glass.

Pour a chilled Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel into a Weizen glass - it is important to use a Weizen glass if you have one available. The half liter Weizen glasses are large enough to accommodate the larger capacity bottle with room for the lively head to expand. And the beer can be lively so tilt the glass and pour carefully or it will jump out of your glass. Imported or just your better Weizen glasses will have a half liter mark on the glass with about an inch above it for head expansion. As soon as you pour a Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel you will notice the airy, foamy head, but don’t pour the beer in all at once - stop and swirl the bottle when about a third is left to get the yeast off the bottom and then finish the pour. The beer will be dark, rich, amber and cloudy from the yeast. The aroma has a slight banana and fruit smell from the unfiltered yeast balanced with sweet roasted malt and toffee from the dark wheat malt. The carbonation is tight and crisp on the tongue and very refreshing. The beer pretty much tastes like it smells. You immediately taste yeast and citrus with a hint of bananas and spice up front. The citrus bite and spices are balanced by sweet creamy roasted malt flavor. It is this smooth sweet malt that sets the Dunkel apart from the more crisp banana and spice taste of a light wheat beer. The Dunkel finishes clean with a hint of hops. The flavor does not linger and leaves you refreshed and wanting more.

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We’re growing! Thanks to you, we’ve outgrown our current space and we’re movin’ on up. And, we’ve got tons to sell before we hit the road! Help us lighten our load! Here is just a sampling of what we’ve got on sale:

There’s even more on sale! Click to check out the entire moving sale!

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