I am a little bit surprised at this reaction. For the current management of Keg King to claim this as an innovation seems a bit much. The Fermenter King Junior was a product that was originally something that Oxebar PTY LTD was going to manufacture and the designs were on the Oxebar.com.au website in 2017. You can see a log of this from The Way Back Machine here:
https://web.archive.org/web/2017122...ar.com.au/kegasaurus/index.php/20l-kegasaurus
The management at Keg King seem to be trying to claim this as their invention but it's not correct. They have not innovated this themselves at all and appear to be touting that this is a product they designed.
We were working on these designs in 2016 - 2017 These were developed as one way kegs with integrated handle but we had a lot of issues with getting this type of handle to release from the injection moulded tooling which was one of the reasons it was not developed earlier. The complications faced in the handles getting stuck in the mould tooling make this particular keg shape problematic. In this design you have some marginal efficiencies gain in the fact that the handles are moulded into the preform neck however these small gains are lost when you factor in the down time from getting the preform stuck in the tooling. Furthermore, this was never designed as a fermenter. It was designed as a 20L disposable keg which is really all it should be used for when the correct resin grade is used with oxygen scavenger.
Keg King have not been able to successfully make a valve for this keg to date which is why they have not been able to sell this as a one way keg. I would assume they are trying to recoup some of the tooling cost by selling this one way keg as a fermenter but really as a fermenter this product has two distinct issues:
1. The 20L size is an unusual size for a fermenter and we would not normally use this size in Australia as it's not the correct size for a traditional single batch of beer. Especially once you factor in a few L of head space, some yeast etc.
2. The opening at the top is quite small. Even a very small hand will not fit into the opening. In general we avoid fermenters that have an opening this small and if you look at many of fermenters that have been designed around the world in the last few years nobody is spending money making these fermenters with 40mm opening. This is one of the reasons why the FermZilla range exists, many customers did complain that they wanted a larger opening to make it easier to clean.
Then you could possibly use it as a cheap keg but please be aware that you need to keep it out of the sun as the clear PET will block very little violet/blue light and your beer will get skunked and if you do keep it in the dark. Skunking would occur in a clear keg like this in 5min in the sun. In addition to this, a plastic keg like this should not be used for beer storage for more than 6-12 weeks max depending on the beer style. The reason for this is that the oxygen transmission rate through the PET is too high. The clear PET being used in these is the bottle grade CZ 328 PET resin. So it's not a suitable grade for long term storage of beer. I think perhaps KK may have forgotten to disclose this. If they included a more sophisticated barrier in this plastic container the storage life could be lengthened but that is not what this product is. If you really want to do a test this to verify what we are saying make a pilsner or similarly light coloured and light flavoured beer (these beers are very noticeable when they get oxidised). Then put some in this 20L keg and put some in a glass bottle or can or stainless keg. Age the samples for more than 3-5 months and you will see a significant difference in flavor.
The reality is we have already done this oxygen transmission testing ourselves and we know the Jade 328 PET resin quite well. If you have about 0.6mm wall thickness (which is what is used on this keg) you get O2 permeation of about 3.5CM^3/(M^2.day.bar). Normally for long term beer storage we would consider 0.5CM^3/(M^2.day.bar) to be quite high but clearly the Jade 328 PET is already 7 times higher than this in the O2 transmission rate. So if you look at the numbers you can also see this product is really not ideal as a keg as well as not ideal as a fermenter.
I think the market does exist for a plastic home brew keg that is cheap. Don't get me wrong. This idea is good. Ideally what is necessary is a multi-layer preform so the gas transmission rate is lower or the use of some other oxygen blocking technology.
Now clearly as a competitor some of you will regard what we have said with some bias. So we would be keen to get your input on the subject from some other experienced and unbiased sources. Do we have any packaging technologists that can comment on this topic on the forum?
