Monitoring Your Kegerator Beer with a Keg Meter

Enjoying draft beer at home from your very own kegerator is always a pleasing experience. In the haze of inebriation, though, you may find it difficult to gauge just how much beer is left in the keg. This is where keg meters have stepped up to the plate. Keg meters tell you how much beer is left in your kegerator's keg. Here we will take a look at some different models of keg meter and other beer/kegerator monitoring devices currently on the market.

The Ball and Keg system allows you to monitor the amount of beer remaining in a homebrew style Cornelius keg. A larger float ball with an internal magnet is dropped into the keg and floats against the side wall while another smaller magnet on the outside of the keg acts as the level indicator when the two balls come together. Very simple solution, but it works. This doesn't help those dispensing commercial Sanke style kegs unfortunately. For that, you need to see the next system.

The Brewskey system makes sure you are never surprised by an empty keg again. Every pour is tracked and measured with the Brewskey flow meters and can send out low beer alerts and other time-sensitive messages. Brewskey upgrades any kegerator by adding pour tracking, user permissions, and drinking badges. The device connects to the internet over your WiFi and uses NFC to authenticate and track every pour. View graphs or leaderboards to see who poured, when they poured, and how much. Every pour offers a chance to unlock a new drinking badge.

One easy way of monitoring the amount of beer left in your beer keg is the use of a keg scale. Most large mail scales can be used for this purpose - just zero the scale at the weight of an empty keg - then you have a mechanical gauge which tells you how full your keg is, and at the lowest cost to you. If you know you will compulsively check your keg meter every five minutes, the scale will not be the best choice, as your beer may foam from temperature changes. But if you have a little knowledge of electronics, you can acquire a digital scale and extend the wiring to the LED display or from the pressure sensor and mount the LED where it can be read from the outside of the kegerator.

For commercial purposes, there is a device called the Keg Level Checker Tool. This device uses a gravity and weight based measurement to monitor the amount of beer left in a standard U.S. keg. This tools looks to be durable and long lasting, as well as easy to use, but clearly fit for commercial beer dispensing and not for the home bar owner.

We can see that there are many options for monitoring the beer in your kegerator. Depending on your budget, and what perks you are looking for, you can easily install a keg monitoring system into your own home built kegerator or your factory produced kegerator.