KegLand Questions and Answers

[mashmaniac]

I think the way KegLand has acted diminishes the amount of home brew stores who are willing to participate in anything KegLand has to offer. If you had a home brew store and had purchased gas bottles, kegs, Robobrews or Kegerators and KegLand undercuts that price so the margin if the home brew store wants to match KegLand is going to be 10% or even zilch. It's the bigger ticketed items make the money for the home brew stores, they will not survive selling grain, yeast and hops. So imagine if the home brew stores closed down, who is going to sell the consumables?
There is no 'price war' the only salvo's being fired are from KegLand, where is the return fire?

I've been lurking.
I have read all (if not most) of your posts regarding the 2 "keg...." Businesses, now most would think from those posts that you had some sort of vested interest, or axe to grind, but you have stated before, you have not. So lets take it from the top.

Late last year those that currently run KegKing booted out some of it's partners. Normal run of thing this is done by buying them out, doing this usually includes signed documents that ensure NON-disclosure, NON-compete, and continued whole sale supply.

That didn't happen... did it.

So the other way to dissolve a partnership is to strong arm your partners and lock them out of their work place.

Yeah ... this did happen.

The partners who left KegKing didn't do so willingly, for some it was their life's work, a harsh kick in the teeth I bet. But they got back up, got their collective **** together, and started again.
Yes they slashed margins to the bone to get their name out there, and let people know they were back.

And since that day you've criticised them for .... what ?not lying down and taking it like some jail house *****?
when someone comes and takes something from you, you just sit in the corner and cry about it?

Well maybe some do.

The guys at kegland seem to be made of something a little tougher.

As for how they run their business and where they place their margins, I believe that is up to them and what THEY believe the market will tolerate. You stated some months ago there would be only one of the "keg..." left, by the sound of all your whining your horse ain't running as well as expected??? Shops selling home brew goods will not disappear. When ever there is demand, the void is usually quickly filled there are plenty of people with money willing to invest in business opportunities, but as KegLand pointed out, they can stay in the 70's and think they'll do ok.
NSW VS Vic on brew shops Vic wins hands down (without either of the "KEG..." ) why? because the people behind those businesses innovated stayed at the cutting edge, grabbed international distributorships, created a known name outside of the suburb they lived in.

I would note Kegland is a forum supporter kegking isn't and as such deserves if not unbridled support from this forum then at least the respect of it's members. The treatment you (WEAL) have shown them is distasteful to say the least, boarding on outright troll.
But you already know that.
Good luck with the lame horse.

 

[Rick88]

Finally a question actually on topic.

We have recently changed plastic in the pump head of the Robobrew and also the magnetic drive pumps that we sell. We used to use a polysulphone which was the same as the March pumps. With that said we have found a new Japanese raw material called Xarec Syndiotactic Polystyrene:
http://www.idemitsu.com/products/petrochemicals/engineering/polystyrene.html
This plastic is not cheap but it's well worth it because it's so stable at high temperatures. You can see the data sheet. We actually use this as a glass reinvorced plastic so it's got excellent properties.

Some other cheaper pumps will typically use the glass reinforced PP. Often glass reinforced PP looks ok when it's new but over time it can creep a little and then cause the dimensional stability of the head of the pump to warp a little over time if elevevated temperatures are used for extended time. This was an issue for a lot of the earlier Grainfather units which used glass reinforced PP.

With regarsd to the kegs Keg King have burned the bridges with the suppliers in China. During this shareholder dispute the remaining shareholder at Keg King decided not to pay the supplier in China who is now out of pocket by over USD$100k. The suppliers used to be loyal to Keg King however if you dont pay your supplier they will eventually go and supply someone else. The same suppliers now are working closely with KegLand Distribution PTY LTD. As a result you will probably find that the kegs that were sold at Keg King prior to Jan 2018 were the same quality as what we are selling now as they are identical. With that said now that Keg King have gone to Alibaba to try and find a whole range of new suppliers in China they are starting to work out how difficult it is to find good quality gear. So the Kegs that have been sold by Keg King after Jan 2018 are definitely not the same as ours kegs. So if you purchased kegs from Keg King prior to Jan 2018 they are probably great.

Excellent. Thank you for the info on the robobrew pump, I will definitely be getting one now.

And thank you for clearing up the keg issue, it makes sense now.

Do you have any plans to sell the plastic disconnects with MFL instead of the barb? Also, any beer line?

 

[Schikitar]

Do you guys plan to sell any fridge conversion kits? I'm looking at converting one of my fridges into a keggerator but not sure what I need and would love to just get a good quality conversion kit which takes all the research out of the task (I've never kegged before)..

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Excellent. Thank you for the info on the robobrew pump, I will definitely be getting one now.

And thank you for clearing up the keg issue, it makes sense now.

Do you have any plans to sell the plastic disconnects with MFL instead of the barb? Also, any beer line?

Yes absolutely the plastic disconnects with thread are coming in a few weeks time.

With regarsd to the beer line this is an area we have been spending a lot of time in development recently. In the past when we used to run the Keg King business we did get some complains about the beer line that we made. At the moment probably the industry leader in beer line is probably Valpar Flexmaster. We have been developing a new type of beer line that will be very similar to this. It's a bit complicated to make as it requires a double wall extrusion machine to make it and also we need to get the polymers for this beer line (especially the inside layer) customer made for us.

So the beer line that we will be making will be sold under our new brand EVABarrier. The main advantages are:
1. Better Kink Resistance
2. Significantly better gas transmissoin rates meaning your beer stays fresher for longer.
3. It will have better tolerances on the outside diameter making it more suitable for push in fittings such as John Guest Fittings.
4. It will have much smoother internal diameter (this is one of the resasons why we are using the double wall extrusion technique). The very smooth inner wall makes it hard for bacteria to grow in the line and hard for any yeast or anything else to attach itself to the side of the line.

So we have intentionally not stocked much beer line at all as we are preparing for this new brand to be released.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Do you guys plan to sell any fridge conversion kits? I'm looking at converting one of my fridges into a keggerator but not sure what I need and would love to just get a good quality conversion kit which takes all the research out of the task (I've never kegged before)..

Yes we will eventually put kits together. But the reason we have not put kits together is largely due to the beer line not being in stock. We have been waiting for this new beer line to come in so that we can start using it in everything. Hard to make up a kit without beer line.

Most of the other parts of the kit are available on our website now and we can also give you some advice on the phone if you just call us +61390187935

Also we have been working on a new brand of push in fittings. In the past the push in fittings that we have sold have been fairly basic and not great quality. Also due to some slight variations in our old beer line it could lead to leaks especially with push in fittings. We are really tightening up on the beer line tolerances now with the EVABarrier beer line which means the outside diameter is accurate to 0.08mm and also the outter skin of the beer line is made from EVA also making it ideal for push in fittings.

The new push in fittings that we are making also have a new patened technology where the o-rings seal around the beer line. This will make our new push in fittings also signficantly more reliable. These new push in fittings have already shown to be more reliable than the John Guest ones so we think they will be really popular and significantly better value than the John Guest ones.

So once we get the new beer line and these new really nice push in fittings we will be able to include both these items in a lot of the kits that we sell.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

The other nice thing about push in fittings is that they allow customers to use the 4mm ID. The 4mm ID beer line is typically too small ID to get onto a lot of the barb fittings which is why we have not included it with kegerators in the past. With that said the 4mm ID our favorite because you only need about 1.5meters to get the same flow resistance as 3 meters of 5mm ID. So you dont have to coil up as much beer line inside the fridge and it keeps thins really neat.

As the push in fittings dont use barbs this is not an issue. So a lot of the new kits will include the 4mm ID beer line as standard. We will also start packing the kegerators with 4mm ID eventually too.

 

[Rick88]

Looks like good things are coming.

One last one if I may, how long until we see the next generation of Fermentasuarus?

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Looks like good things are coming.

One last one if I may, how long until we see the next generation of Fermentasuarus?

We are building a whole new blow molding facility to manufacture the new shape and design Fermentasaurus 2. As you can imagine setting up a whole new production line takes some time. With that said I think the new production line should be up and running by the end of 2018.

 

[Nullnvoid]

C

We are building a whole new blow molding facility to manufacture the new shape and design Fermentasaurus 2. As you can imagine setting up a whole new production line takes some time. With that said I think the new production line should be up and running by the end of 2018.

Cool, might be ready to get one by that time!

 

[H@wkeye!]

We are building a whole new blow molding facility to manufacture the new shape and design Fermentasaurus 2. As you can imagine setting up a whole new production line takes some time. With that said I think the new production line should be up and running by the end of 2018.

Any chance it they would have a 60L capacity?

 

[wealsy22]

So we have intentionally not stocked much beer line at all as we are preparing for this new brand to be released.

Any ETA on the beer line?

 

[Rick88]

Any plans to introduce afterpay?

 

[mashmaniac]

will kegasaurus ever going to be available to the home brewer?

 

[FarsideOfCrazy]

If all these 'plans/ ideas' come off and are going to be as good as you say they will I'm interested and will watch with a keen eye. It looks like you are fixing alot of the problems with some of the KK gear.

I've been burnt by KK gear in the past so I avoid it, plastic dissconnects, beer line to name a few that others have mentioned.

So these changes sound positive.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Any chance it they would have a 60L capacity?

This is impossible. This will already be the largest PET injection stretch blow molding machines ever built.

For HDPE and many other plastics larger sizes are quite straight forward. For PET it's a completely different technology and making larger sizes has some real challenges. 50L is the largest size we will make in the foreseable future.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Any plans to introduce afterpay?

We do get this question quite a lot. The issue with Afterpay is that it means the transaction will cost a couple more percent for us to process. So we would have to factor this into our pricing and increase our pricing for everyone just so some people can get the product with this finance optoin. As we pride ourselves on the fact that we supply the best value gear we are reluctant to do anything like this that could impact on our competitiveness.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

If all these 'plans/ ideas' come off and are going to be as good as you say they will I'm interested and will watch with a keen eye. It looks like you are fixing alot of the problems with some of the KK gear.

I've been burnt by KK gear in the past so I avoid it, plastic dissconnects, beer line to name a few that others have mentioned.

So these changes sound positive.

Yes we are making a lot of changes to the gear.

we can give you our 100% assurance that our ball lock disconnects are as good as the German CMB disconnects or Cornelius brand disconnects. The tolerances on all the sealing surfaces are controlled to quite tight tolerances and tested before dispatch. So if I can convince you to give our disconnects a go you will not be dissapointed:

https://www.kegland.com.au/catalogsearch/result/?q=ball+lock+disconnect

As you can see our disconnects are currently $2.60. We will not hold this cheap price forever and it will definitely go up. I think even if you doubled the price you would not find an equivalent quality disconnect.

If you really want quality though then simply go for the stainless ones. We have been in this game for long enough to know it only takes a small amount of damage to the inside of a plastic disconnect to cause you to loose a whole bottle of gas. The cost of a refill of gas is already more than the difference between the plastic and stiainless disconnects.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Any ETA on the beer line?

The first lot of beer line should be available from about 4th June. The first lot is just a sample batch and we will most likely make some further refinements in the first 1-2 batches. It will definitely be better than the stuff that we used to sell at KK though.

 

[f00b4r]

Who are Brewsmarter in relation to Kee/KegLand?
I'm in the UK and usually buy your stuff through the local distributor there (Malt Miller) but there are occasions when he and other new resellers are out of stock and the replenish times can be quite lengthy. It looks to me and others that they are either the part of your company based in China manufacturing and also distributing to the EU/N America or a contacted manufacturer either doing over runs and selling them and/or maybe selling the stuff that doesn't meet QA (the latter being okay for some items but definitely not good for others).
Apologies for the cheeky question and good to see you continuing to work on new products and seeking feedback on the Fermentasaurus v2

 

[Jack of all biers]

50L is the largest size we will make in the foreseable future.

This I like the sound of. Keep up that innovation and good on you for value adding and improving the gear for us to use.