Philips Perfect draft machine

[sgrimshaw]

studio117 said:

My local spoons(fairly ok) is less than 4 quid a pint. Can't beat that tbh.

In the provinces they charge less than 2 quid for some pints

[kingston12]

kingston12 said:

I was going to hold on until I have had the delivery, but since you ask:

http://www.belgianbeerfactory.com/

Not a recommendation yet as I have not had delivery and it is around two weeks now. I will let you know!

Regrettably, I will have to move this to 'not recommended at all'. They really are all over the place!

I think I will just limit the use of the machine to a few kegs each time I come back from Holland. Probably good for me not to have beer at home on tap all the time anyway...

[kingston12]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

Shame about the delivery service

I definitely think there is a gap in the market in the UK for a decent stockist of these kegs.

I wonder if the demand is there. The general feedback on this thread is if it is more expensive than bottled beer it is not worth it, and I can definitely understand that point of view.

I'd definitely be happy to pay £20 a keg for it, and it should be possible to make a reasonable profit on that for someone who already has a distribution line in place. If these are available at the supermarket in NL for as little as €11 (say £8.50), then a wholesaler must be able to buy them for slightly less.

The problem is that the rare wholesaler that does do them over here want more like £45 a keg which is over £4 a pint!

On the upside, I still have one of my Hertog Jan kegs full

[Mutley]

Hmmm, I see a business opportunity. Daytrip to a supplier in Belgium/Holland.

Load the car, come back. Mail to customer.....

[Russ T Bolt]

Might be of interest to some of you chaps, Costco have currently got 5L kegs of Hobgoblin Gold at 11.98 inc VAT

[kingston12]

Just as an update to this, my kegs arrived fine from the Belgian Beer Factory after almost 4 weeks, lots of chasing and requests to cancel.

I placed another order with https://www.saveur-biere.com/en/ on Tuesday and they have already arrived!

Unfortunately, this is a bit too expensive to use normally (their kegs are actually a bit cheaper, but postage much more expensive)

[EJH]

I bought one of these when I lived in Jersey; although one could only get the Becks and the Leffe barrels (and they were £20-£22 each) it was a fun toy to have.

Since I moved back to the UK last year, most UK-based suppliers seem to be quite expensive and/or have punitive delivery charges…so in May we did a trip to France for the weekend and, amongst other things, picked up a few kegs (it really was a few; I was in the 500).

Ignoring the €5 per keg deposit, I think they were €18-20 each. Not only do I have my favourite toy up and running, but it’s running at ~£1.20 a pint so I can call it value!

Not the best selection of beer (I suspect the Belgians and the Dutch have this covered) but they had Leffe, Hoegaarden and Jupiler amongst others. Leffe Rituel was a mistake (I like Leffe and I assumed that 9% Leffe was just more to like); oh how wrong I was!

[kingston12]

EJH said:

I bought one of these when I lived in Jersey; although one could only get the Becks and the Leffe barrels (and they were £20-£22 each) it was a fun toy to have.

Since I moved back to the UK last year, most UK-based suppliers seem to be quite expensive and/or have punitive delivery charges…so in May we did a trip to France for the weekend and, amongst other things, picked up a few kegs (it really was a few; I was in the 500).

Ignoring the €5 per keg deposit, I think they were €18-20 each. Not only do I have my favourite toy up and running, but it’s running at ~£1.20 a pint so I can call it value!

Not the best selection of beer (I suspect the Belgians and the Dutch have this covered) but they had Leffe, Hoegaarden and Jupiler amongst others. Leffe Rituel was a mistake (I like Leffe and I assumed that 9% Leffe was just more to like); oh how wrong I was!

I have not tried the Leffe Rituel, but it sounds a bit too much to me as well! Leffe Blonde is the next keg going into my machine. I love that stuff, but I am not sure if having a 6.6% beer on tap is too good an idea!

I have actually got a couple of small bottles of Leffe Royale to try at some point (the 7.5% one). That is available on Perfect Draft as well, but again probably a bit too much.

£1.20 a pint is great. The supermarkets favourite deal at the moment seems to be 3 of the large 660ml bottles for £5 which is around £1.50 a pint, so if you are beating that you are doing well. Even the corner shop '6 cans of Stella for £7' is more money and not really comparable.

I'd not be able to pick any up in France, unfortunately, as I have got a 2 seater that would be chock full anyway if we took a trip.

Nice to hear there are a few of us with these machines, I think they are great!

[EJH]

kingston12 said:

I have not tried the Leffe Rituel, but it sounds a bit too much to me as well! Leffe Blonde is the next keg going into my machine. I love that stuff, but I am not sure if having a 6.6% beer on tap is too good an idea!

I have actually got a couple of small bottles of Leffe Royale to try at some point (the 7.5% one). That is available on Perfect Draft as well, but again probably a bit too much.

£1.20 a pint is great. The supermarkets favourite deal at the moment seems to be 3 of the large 660ml bottles for £5 which is around £1.50 a pint, so if you are beating that you are doing well. Even the corner shop '6 cans of Stella for £7' is more money and not really comparable.

I'd not be able to pick any up in France, unfortunately, as I have got a 2 seater that would be chock full anyway if we took a trip.

Nice to hear there are a few of us with these machines, I think they are great!

Leffe at home (or "Belgian in sanity beer," as it became known is *relatively* safe. It only once left me with a mid-week hangover when my neighbour and I accidentally drained the keg and had a coupe of bottles of Erdinger as a chaser. As a colleague said to me the next morning, "he didn't know if I had some work for him to do, wanted him to do the morning coffee run or wanted to kill him." Oops.

Re: space, we took the 500 last time as the weather was dire. Might take the 911 next time (and I have some empty barrels to return so I can work out how best to pack them.

[Mutley]

kingston12 said:

I have not tried the Leffe Rituel, but it sounds a bit too much to me as well! ...

Nice to hear there are a few of us with these machines, I think they are great!

I like Leffe Rituel, but not more than 1 stubbie in an evening, it blows your head. Am currently enjoying Leffe Brun in the machine, it flows nicer than blond.

Just back from Le Tour, and stopped off at Adenkirke, no Hertog Jan (tried it, want more) but 5 kegs later, the boot is full, and so is the beer corner of the garage!

[paolow]

kingston12 said:

Regrettably, I will have to move this to 'not recommended at all'. They really are all over the place!

I think I will just limit the use of the machine to a few kegs each time I come back from Holland. Probably good for me not to have beer at home on tap all the time anyway...

I was inspired by the above web site and despite the concerns about vague delivery times whacked an order in for two cases of my favourite belgian tipple. Total was a shade under £70 delivered vs £150 for the same amount in this country.
Delivery took about a fortnight but communication was fine and I was in no hurry. When the courier delivered it I opened a stout box to find each single bottle had been painstakingly wrapped in its own sleeve of cardboard - I had expected to find just two cases taped together and the whole package was complete and in all the experience was effortless.
I can also confirm the beer is delicious! I am on holdiay for a fortnight from tonight and will be doing my level best to make a good size dent in it
I will deffo be using them again - at the prices the exchange gives us you can get Belgian tripels for not much more than 'cooking lager' over here

[kingston12]

paolow said:

I was inspired by the above web site and despite the concerns about vague delivery times whacked an order in for two cases of my favourite belgian tipple. Total was a shade under £70 delivered vs £150 for the same amount in this country.
Delivery took about a fortnight but communication was fine and I was in no hurry. When the courier delivered it I opened a stout box to find each single bottle had been painstakingly wrapped in its own sleeve of cardboard - I had expected to find just two cases taped together and the whole package was complete and in all the experience was effortless.
I can also confirm the beer is delicious! I am on holdiay for a fortnight from tonight and will be doing my level best to make a good size dent in it
I will deffo be using them again - at the prices the exchange gives us you can get Belgian tripels for not much more than 'cooking lager' over here

I am glad it worked out for you. I got my stuff from them in the end (apart from one of the glasses that I bought as an add on). I will probably use them again for bottles - as you say, the exchange rate combined with their low postage rate really makes it really quite cheap. I doubt I'll use them for the kegs again as they seem to find them hard to get hold of.

[Mutley]

Looking at the List a nice selection, but the issue will always be shipping to the UK. Although, I would imagine making a big enough order could offset the shipping cost.

[kingston12]

Mutley said:

Looking at the List a nice selection, but the issue will always be shipping to the UK. Although, I would imagine making a big enough order could offset the shipping cost.

The problem is, even if you order 10 kegs the delivery still works out at €6 for each keg. You also need to add €5 each for the deposit, so it is still over €35 each to get one over here. £2.50ish a pint.

The other thing with buying in bulk is the use-by dates. Some of the ones I have been sent recently should be used by October 2015, which is fine, but I wouldn't want too many in stock and risk not using them in time

[Markky123]

Calais De vins 10 mins from the euro tunnel they stock some of the German selection as well franizkaner is a must on this machine)

Edited by Markky123 on Wednesday 14th October 08:56

[Mutley]

That is just enough.
Adinkeirke?

[BrabusMog]

Can these be picked up in Germany or Denmark?

I've got to drive to a customer in Hamburg next week and I can see from that list that Löwenbrau is for sale in 6l kegs. Löwenbrau is probably my favourite beer, so I'd buy the system for that alone.

[Mutley]

Quite possibly. Just have a look at supermarkets. I find they're stocked in the smaller chains

Edited by Mutley on Wednesday 14th October 08:49

[Markky123]

[Markky123]