If you watch a lot of sports or TV, you have probably seen the new Draftmark system. I have to say the first time I saw this, it was a must have for me. Sure it seems like a novelty item, but it was a novelty item I wanted. Before I get started, if you are a beer snob, you are not going to like this article. I am just a guy who likes a cold beer and really does not care about how much foam is on the beer, the color or the texture, I just drink beer. I like anything from a cheap beer to an expensive beer.
The Draftmark is basically your own home draft beer, pretty cool. So here is how the system works. You buy the Draftmark for about $50 and then you can buy different beer to have on tap. The Draftmark doesn’t use any CO2, it uses regular air to push the beer into your glass. One cool thing is the air is only introduced to your beer when you pour, so nothing sits in the keg which means a longer shelf life, about 30 days. A plus to this system is there is very little maintenance to it. Once you open the package, there is really only five steps before you can have a nice, cold, refreshing beer. You will need to charge the battery. Not sure how long it takes because I just charged it over night because I also had to let the 1 gallon beer sit in the fridge to get it cold. I do wish the battery had a fuel status gauge in the front so I know when it needs to be recharged. I am not sure how many beers you can pour before it needs to be recharged. The Draftmark opens up, you put in a new spout, pop in your beer, close it up and you’re ready to have a drink. I have to say they did make the system very easy to use.
There are a couple down sides to this system. First, there isn’t a lot of variety of different beers to pick from. I saw they offered 312 which is my beer of choice. However I still can’t find that beer. They do offer Budweiser, Goose Island Pale Ale, Goose island Belgium, and Michelob light, plus a couple others. I just wish there was more of a variety. Also I thought this would be a cheaper way to get beer since I am only buying one package and not buying all the cans or glass. When I check it out at my local store (it was only one store for research so I could be off). I found I was paying about .86 for a can of beer, $1.01 for a bottle of beer and the Draftmark came out to be about $1.25 per beer. Another downside is once you put this in the fridge, you have lost that space. Not a huge deal, but it would be nice if the top was flat so I could store things on top of the system.
All in all I do like the system. Yes it is more of a novelty item, but it’s a cool novelty item. I love being able to just grab a glass from the freezer and have as much or as little cold beer as I want.
They could have made this a winner if the mini kegs came with more beer in them, and a greater selection. I think Heineken tried something similar and it never took off for the most part. From a business standpoint I don’t know why they don’t push it more as shipping a big plastic jug has to be cheaper than shipping bottles or cans which are more likely to break. I think if they dropped the price to like 30 bucks and priced refills cheaper it could be a big deal.
I have jad one for a year now and I like it. Its as close to draft as you will get without the work of building and maintaining a kegerator (which is what im working on now with all of my lovely milwaukee tools). They need to expand the selection of beers and drop price for awhile to let it really catch on.