Choosing The Right Beer Faucet

The beer faucets you use are one aspect of your home draft system that is easily customizable. You have your tower units for the ease of the tall bartender and your front mounted units for kegerator conversions. You have a nearly unlimited array of tap handles, from modern to vintage. For the cask ale fan, there is a whole other world of beer engines for you to choose from. For families and the all ages clubhouse, there is the key-lock faucet - to ensure that the beer stays out of reach for those not of drinking age. By thinking ahead when designing you home draft system, you can ensure that you choose the right beer faucets for your home bar.

The material that your beer faucet is made out of does affect your beer to some degree. The choices most commonly available are beer faucets in stainless steel, brass, and chrome. Stainless steel is the best choice, for durability and for taste. If you are a fan of large or bulky tap handles, you will find that stainless steel will keep on pouring, whereas brass can work harden and develop stress fractures, eventually breaking. Most home brewers start out with the standard plastic spigots coming right from the keg, but when you move to a kegerator or other home draft system, the rules change. Now you are in a position to ensure that your beer pour perfect every time. You just have to dial it in.

Part of dialing you perfect pint is choosing the right beer faucet for the right beer. Stouts have a different thickness, and so different faucets are made to dispense them. Some faucets are even made with a flow control setting. This setting allows you to adjust your pour with an allen wrench. This allows you to use the same faucet, no matter which beer you have flowing through your keg – you just have to remember to re-adjust after your new keg is hooked up.

Some beer faucets have longer spouts. These long spouted beer faucets are designed to eliminate foam. Note that this does not eliminate the head to the beer, just the head that gets out of hand. These longer spouted beer faucets are common design elements to the “European” beer faucet. We have seen this style of beer faucet offered with gold plating even!

Pouring a good pint of beer usually requires pulling the faucet all the way open in one smooth motion. For the busy bartender, setting the faucet back in the off position can sometimes be a chore. Hence the spring-back faucet. These kinds of faucets will return to their original (closed) position after the barkeep lets them go, thus ensuring little drippage over the course of a busy night of pulling pints.

One aspect of pulling the perfect pint is making sure that no one messes with your draft system! To help with this, faucet locks are available in a few different styles. These different styles match the different kinds of beer faucets, whether stout or regular draft faucet. They are priced according to the security they afford usually, so buy according to what makes your feel your beer is safe. We, personally, would recommend the more inexpensive version, as an effective deterrent force.

The crowning aspect of your beer faucet is, of course, the faucet handle, or tap handle. Simple ones are available with your draft system kit, but finding the right one is a little harder. Many brand-name beer tap handles are available on Kegerators.com, as well as some stranger brands. If you cannot find what you are looking for there, you may want to hit up antique stores. Generic and custom tap handles can also be found at other sites on the interweb.

See related: Selecting a Kegerator, Faucet Parts, Choosing a Keg Tap