Nothing quite beats the joy of a cold, crisp pint of beer after a hard day at work. And while the ideal place for such a treat is a pub beer garden, it's not always the practical option.
Having a cold beer at home is perfectly possible; we all have a fridge and a source of bottles or cans. But we all know they're not the same as a draught beer pulled behind a bar.
Kitchen appliance specialist Salter and Phillips are among the companies offering a solution to this little problem, though, with a home beer dispenser that promise to deliver cold, fizzy beers straight from a tap in the comfort of your own home.
Gareth Butterfield tries the Salter version and tested it with a range of kegs.
The elaborately-named EK4919 Beer Dispenser weighs in at £179.99 on the Salter website - comfortably under cutting many of its rivals and boasts all the features of a typical home-bar setup. And, I've found if you shop around, you might find it for £150. Cheers to that!
It contains a chamber in which you sit a ubiquitous five-litre keg and an array of connectors and cleaning items, along with a handful of mini gas bottles and a handy drip tray.
Plugged into the mains, and filled with water, it will cool the keg and keep it cool for as long as it takes you to empty the barrel, and you can give it a head start by putting the keg in the fridge for a few hours or so.
I tested it with a range of kegs, including a Heineken, a foreign beer I've forgotten the name of and one of my favourite tipples, Adnams Ghost Ship.
The kegs vary in price a bit, starting at around £20 if you shop around a bit, but quickly heading north of £30 if you prefer a more premium beer, or a craft beer.
And each keg is good for around nine pints, so it's great value for money. Oh, and the beer that comes out is absolutely delicious.
Honestly, pull a pint in a pub, and a pint out of Salter's machine, and you wouldn't be able to tell them apart in a blind test.
However, it's not all plain sailing. My wife and I had some real fun and games installing the first keg. The fittings are a bit clumsy, and the instructions supplied are pretty basic. There's a much better guide on the Salter website and Youtube videos got us there in the end, but let's just say I had to change a T-shirt and give the utility room a full wipe down after the first time I tried to get it going.
Eventually, you'll master it and become a dab hand. And the same can be said for pouring the beer itself. There's a fine line between too much gas and not enough, and the dial on the top to adjust the flow is quite vague. But once you've found the sweet spot, and mastered pouring, there's no stopping you.
Overall, I'm really impressed with the Salter Beer Dispenser. I love the fact replacement kegs can be picked up at a supermarket, and I still can't get over how good the beer tastes. I wish it was easier to set up, but it's fine once you've got the hang of it.
It's a fabulous device for parties, or for anyone partial to that post-work pint.
With code FATHERSDAY20, the Salter Beer Dispenser is available for £143.99 on www.salter.com but the promotion only runs until June 19.
Gemma Sherlock, our Affiliates Editor, and her partner Mark tried the PerfectDraft beer Dispenser and, it's another product which failed to disappoint.
The Reviews Club has tried the Philips PerfectDraft beer dispenser - the at-home beer machine that lets beer lovers bring the best of the pub, to the comfort of their own home.
Prices start from £249 for the machine which features a premium chrome finish, and a built-in LED display which shows you the exact keg temperature and volume of beer remaining.
The beer dispenser is pretty impressive because not only can you show off to your friends by providing IPAs and craft lager on tap, you might just improve the flavour compared to drinking out the can.
Kegs for the Perfect Draft machine start from £25.40 at Beer Hawk too, and it's compatible with more than 45 different kegs including Corona, Stella Artois, Budweiser, Leffe and Goose Island.
When we first had the machine delivered and removed it from the box, we were immediately surprised at how sleek the machine looked, and secondly how big it was.
Put it this way, before you think about buying one, it's definitely worth measuring up and checking to see if you actually have space for it in your kitchen or, if you're lucky, in your at-home bar.
We jigged some things around in the kitchen to make room for it, it does take a lot of room up on the counter.
It's really easy to set up despite it looking a little overwhelming due to its size but there's a handy manual guide if you get stuck.
We also received two Corona kegs to try out with the machine, and this was easy to set up into the dispenser using the pump and tap supplied.
You have to wait for each keg to get to the right temperature on the LED display before it is 'drinkable'. Once the beer reaches 3 degrees it's then ready to drink.
When we read in the manual that it can take up to 12 hours for a beer to chill however, we were like are you kidding?
So our advice would be to make sure that once you receive the kegs you keep them in a cool place to reduce the waiting time, or pop it into the dispenser straight away to begin the countdown to cooling.
From an ambient temperature of around 16 degrees it can take up to 12 hours to chill the kegs - so if you are thinking of using this when hosting a get together make sure to keep the kegs cool before installing them in the machine.
PerfectDraft chills your beer to 3 degrees, keeping it fresh for 30 days. The LED display also counts down the days the beer is safe to still consume.
The kegs are six litres, which is roughly 10 pints.
There is a great selection of beers to choose from and they are from all around the globe - the Perfect Draft Thornbridge Shelby IPA is a favourite of ours.
BrewDog’s Punk IPA is now available to pour at home with PerfectDraft too. Priced at £41.90, the new keg is available on BeerHawk now.
Beer Hawk also encourage you to return your empty kegs and will reward you with £5 of beers tokens to go towards your next order, which we thought was a nice bonus.
The price of the kegs are reasonable compared to the price of a pint at the pub.
But we would say that if you compare the price per litre of the beers to buying bottles/cans at the supermarket then it is more expensive. That being said we always prefer a draught pint to cans/bottles.
Therefore, we believe the machine is great value for money at £249.
Find out more about the machine and available bundles here.
