Nukatap didn't exist when I got the Ultrataps, and your previous KK clone taps were perpetually out of stock anyway.
None of the [trimmed] marketing spiel is particularly objective or measurable, and there's no mention of a lifetime warranty to back up the lifetime seals claim.
In any case, I'm hardly going to throw out my taps and replace them all with Nukataps...
This is correct.
It seems to be a complete TapCooler alternative/clone, you'd need to have a push-in fitting on your extension piece -- similar to
this. Probably handy for those with Nukataps too, as it mitigates the need to faff around unscrewing nozzles.
Thanks for that feedback. We are always open to criticism and I think it's important for customers to be critical of manufactures. With respect to the Nukatap vs Ultratap comparison I would suggest you to testing just like we do so you can make your own judgement. The testing we used to form our opinion included:
1. Chemical Testing
We test a number of chemicals that are used in the brewing industry. To accellerate the testing we use higher concentration that what is normally used. For our testing we take apart the tap and immerse all parts and all seals into several chemicals for 2 months. Some of the tests include:
a) Acetic Acid (pure vinegar from the supermarket will do)
b) Phosphoric Acid 30% concentration
c) Lactic Acid
d) 70% ethanol
e) Caustic soda 20% concentration
f) PBW - at 5 times the normal concentration
From our testing the silicone seals were damaged by the phosphoric acid with the surface becomming chalky and small cracks appeared. The black seals that we assume are NBR experienced damage caused by the acetic acid and were slightly swolen. In full disclosure I will also say that from this testing we also revealed that our nylon bushings in the first Nukataps failed which is one of the reasons we replaced all nylon bushings with self lubricating HDPE. These new self lubricating bushings were changed to RED colour so they can be easily identified as you can see
here in this seal kit. We also found self lubcricating feature nice anyway as it alowed for smoother tap movement which was a secondary benefit.
2.First Pour Foam Testing
This testing is fairly straight forward to do. We used one keg and then put a tee piece in the beer line and split off to both the
Nukatap and Ultratap. We left the taps warm up to room temp then poured a beer through the Nukatap then wait another 15 min then pour a beer through the ultratap, then repeated this process 4 times with different beer types. On every test we did the first pour foam was more on the Ultratap. With that said we would really appreciate other people posting their own research here as a form of "peer review"
3. Laminar Flow Testing
This is difficult to measure numerically but we have done a lot of computer simulation which is difficult for customers to replicate. With that said if you just pour a beer you will notice the Nukataps have a very laminar stream and probably the best test for you guys to do at home is to just see how much foam you get on the two taps and we are confident you will get the same results as we did.
4. Is NSF certified, ANSI acredited and SCC acredited
Well this is fact. As we sell a lot of Nukataps in America and many go into commercial installations we have got the NSF certification. We also sell the Nukataps into many other countriesincluding Canada which is why we also got the SCC acreditation. So it's fair to say that this is "fact".
5.Harder Wearing Seals
We have done extensive cycling testing and this is an area that we have gone to great expense to find the best compount. The main wearing seal are the seals that seal around the ball on the handle shaft. As this ball is moving back and forth over and over again this is where significant wear happens. As much as silicone is great for some applications it's not really great for everything especially wear and abrasion resistance. The red bushings that we use typically last well over 1million tap pours while silicone o-rings wear out under the same conditions after several thousand pours. We have done this cycle testing already but I would suggest that if you want to test this you get a pneumatic cylinder and mount it to the tap handle to automatically turn the tap on and off at a relatively fast rate.
6. Better Value
Well this is fact. the Nukataps are better value and this can be verified by our pricing on our website.
I also forgot to mention the Nukatap performed better under very high pressures too as we have done mains water pressure testing where we also foud the Nukatap to be superior.
So I think we have done what we can to make our claims "objective" but I would still invite anyone to post any documented testing they have done if they choose to disprove our claims.
