What Is The Best Beer Tap?

What Is The Best Beer Tap?
Some of the characteristics that distinguish a good (or premium) beer tap from others are:

• build quality

         Many less expensive options have cheap components. Issues such as poor chrome plating, poor tolerances, poor internal processing, etc. All of this can lead to irregular pouring, foaming, stuck faucets, etc.

• durability

       All things are born and sometimes die. But you know you've been drinking chrome when the chrome on your beer tap starts to darken and disappear. That's too bad.

• Performance

       A well-brewed beer deserves a well-crafted pour. By that I mean the ability of the tap to pour out a pint without too much water in a variety of less than ideal conditions. All taps perform best when properly balanced, but a quality beer tap can make up for some "environmental deficiencies"

• price

       With almost everything in life, you get what you pay for. I will say though, that the novelty and joy of pouring your own draft beer wears off pretty quickly if you can't pour a decent pint without a glass full of foam. The small price difference between premium beer taps is more than made up for in enjoyment. Or without frustration...

What Is The Best Beer Tap?
There are many good and affordable beer taps on the market, but I have two specific recommendations:

 

PERLICK 650SS Positive Seal Flow Control Faucet、

Best beer tap I've found so far
Beer taps in my Keezer
Some of my own beer taps, including a PERLICK 650SS.

Of all the other faucets I've tried, I like this forward seal faucet the best. I personally use a Perlick 6500SS faucet in my keezer almost every day. As such, I can compare it reasonably objectively to the faucets I personally own and to the faucets that other homebrewers I know have.

For me, these two stand out features are very obvious:

 

• Flow Control - This tap has a small lever on the side that controls how much beer is allowed through the tap. this is a big problem. With flow control, you can slow down the flow when filling your wine glass or bottle from the tap. Or make small adjustments to compensate for imbalances in pressure, line length or temperature. All of these factors affect beer head, so it's important to have an easy way to exercise some control.
• Forward Seal - The forward seal design prevents oxygen from entering the interior of the faucet. This in turn helps keep the beer from drying out inside the unit. This in turn helps prevent the faucet from getting stuck or stuck. This is handy if you only smoke a pint or two a day, or if you sometimes smoke a few days between pints.

PERLICK 630SS Stainless Steel Draft Beer Tap
This is a great value beer tap at a lower price point. It still has the same "anti-stick" features, but lacks the flow control of the 650SS. All in all, this is a great value faucet. In my experience, it performs much better than the slightly cheaper chrome faucets of unknown Chinese origin plastered all over the internet. In this case, just a few extra dollars can really make a huge difference.

No matter what you choose...
It is very important to keep your draft beer system in proper balance. Balance is the science and art of pouring the perfect pint with just the right head. The beer tap you choose has a big impact on this, but a properly balanced system is just as important.

 

A balanced vent system will cut the vent line to the correct length based on the pressure and temperature of the keg of carbonated beer.