Anyone getting (got) a Synek?

One of the two kickstarters I have ever given money too, and I am picking mine up in a little bit. The bags were (hopefully still are) listed as a way to also serve homebrew. So I got it for both a neat bulk way to serve my own brews and a way to get some of the local microbrew in an O2 free(ish) way.

Now that my pick up is close, and people are having good feedback on the PicoBrew, I am wondering if the Pico would be a good companion to the Synek? That way I make a two gallon brew, one gallon goes into a baggy and one gallon gets bottled for longer storage.

Just thinking out loud. Anyone here get a Synek?

http://synek.beer/

No one huh? Interesting. Well the timing seems good. I have an IPA that just went into full krausen last night so when I pick mine up the plan will be...

...get one bag filled with german alt or heff.
...try to get one bag filled at a micro that has decent IPA

Then the IPA should be ready and I want to put one gallon of that into a bag to condition. Just to see how it goes. (That kinda was my main driver on this, was being able to have a serving system without the kegs involved, not sure if it will work, but hey...)

Umm, that's pretty pricey for a 1 gallon "kegerator". I would personally go for one of the Drinktank growlers, same fluid OZ, stainless steel (no plastic bags), portable and easier to fill at pubs without special adapter: http://www.drinktanks.com/product/drinktanks-128-oz-growler-pre-sale/

Buy the growler and the serving tap for it and it will be $145 cheaper than the Synek.

Unless I'm missing something here?

dmcman73 said:

Unless I'm missing something here?

Click to expand...

Well, I am not here to sell you or defend the system for everyone.

First thing I liked was pressurized with CO2 so that you can have it for a long time without trying to drink a whole growler in a day or so. Also, my current 3gal kegging system cost more and takes much more maintenance than I expect on this.

sablesurfer said:

Well, I am not here to sell you or defend the system for everyone.

First thing I liked was pressurized with CO2 so that you can have it for a long time without trying to drink a whole growler in a day or so. Also, my current 3gal kegging system cost more and takes much more maintenance than I expect on this.

Click to expand...

The one I linked to can is also pressurized using the Keg Cap system: http://www.drinktanks.com/product/keg-cap-kit/

Not as pretty I'll give you that, but still a lot less money for basically the same functionality.

I've been thinking of getting one of these.

http://www.growlerwerks.com/?gclid=...VHr111a-BhwUfv9nnu7f7YxA1C16r4hQLgaAk9l8P8HAQ

wobdee said:

I've been thinking of getting one of these.

http://www.growlerwerks.com/?gclid=...VHr111a-BhwUfv9nnu7f7YxA1C16r4hQLgaAk9l8P8HAQ

Click to expand...

I saw these when they were on Kickstarter, they are also really nice and they are an all in one unit..

While it may be a 1 gal kegerator, making a cost comparison to the pressurized growlers is not quite fair unless you include the cost of a fridge...which the synek includes. Yes, you can always do things differently/cheaper but the growler solution is not the same. For me, and I'm sure many others, I get flack for having beer dispensing (tap-a-draft, which works great) in my main fridge. A full on kegerator is not an option where I live.

The Synek, which I think would be more fairly compared to the 5L minikeg dispenser systems out there, is a viable option due to space constraints.

I do like the idea. That said, I have not ordered as I don't like to buy first gen products. If it gets good reviews here, I'll be in.

I have pics from my set up of first one and some immediate thoughts. Will get them posted this weekend. Still like it overall, just working out how it will fit into my processes.

Ok, so I got my Synek beer dispenser set up and running. It is interesting and the idea still intrigues me.

First some pics of the thing and the parts:

Box is pretty big, probably 2.5 feet square. At the pick up event they gave out the bags and the extra bits like paintball canister with logo, extra bags for beer, etc.





It looks pretty right out of the box.

The insides are pretty straight forward, one side for the canister and one for the filled up beer baggie. Hoses are pretty standard and look like I could easily replace over time as long as the plastic pressure attachments are not messed up.



This is definitely not a plug and play set up. People will have to know how to attach a regulator, how to compression fit hoses to a regulator, how to maintain tap shanks and stuff. Right off the bat I found one fix that HAS to be made due to pressure. The hose on shank is just over a barb, once that has liquid and pressure on it it starts to slip off.

The baggies are actually kinda cool. They hold 128oz and can be filled from the tap in a way to really lower the O2 they are in contact with. The bar has a filler and an overflow set up. They fill the bag letting the foam out the overflow. They do it through the filler lid on the bag, so it pushes out all O2 and keeps pressure on the beer.





The baggies are a pretty tight fit into the machine. The hoses all hook up pretty easily.



(Notice the hose without the hose clamp on it, that is pretty much how I figured out that was a necessity.)

Setting temps on this is extremely easy, they have your standard PC power cord with the three way PC plug on one end and a US grounded plug on other. (They are shipping international, no idea what those cords will look like.)

I have been using it now for a couple days. Pours fine, holds temps, looks kinda nifty on the shelf.

When I was at Synek event, there were a variety of people there. Only one other homebrewer in the crowd that I could find, and he had to drive from a whole state away! (To give you an idea, we have four home brew clubs in town and one of the national qualifying beer competitions is here, so not like there are no other brewers.)

One couple decided to explain to me how they'd gone on a spree of kickstarters, they had even gotten that cooler with the built in radio and stuff. They are 'chardonnay' drinkers and they got this because it looked cool. The guy then asked me about why (this Reinheitsgebot German brewery) didn't have an IPA.

So...that is the kind of people buying this machine. It is NOT for them. There might be a few up for sale in a few months when they realize that they cannot just plug it in and it does not magically fill itself up with beer.

1) There is some assembly. If you have any familiarity with kegging then you got this no sweat. If you are even slightly mechanical the instructions shouldn't be needed.

2) There is a bit of work to get it pouring beer. The bags are good, but you need to hook up hoses and those hoses are really tight in the space, like almost kinked. (Some online have said they did kink.) The bags, when full and pressurized, take some small effort to get into place, you have to fold up corners and press it in to the cooling area.

3) Sanitation is not for the avg users. As a home brewer my first thoughts looking at this as I had the parts out was that I needed to disassemble further and sanitize all those hoses and the tap.

4) They made a change during build, because 'the brewers told us', to flow control perlicks from the standard. I have been brewing for many years and I have NO IDEA how to use this thing, hell taking it apart to clean and put keg lub in was a new interesting experience. (Had to watch a video to figure it out.)
--- Oh, and my flow control appears to be backward, it moves back toward the shank, figured when I pulled it apart I'd figure out how to fix it, but nope.
--- Oh, I had to pull it apart because first hook up it was leaking, dribbiling the whole time. Pulled it apart to keg lube and see if that helped, it did. (But any non-kegging user would be ticked off!)


There are also a couple of build issues overall and one experience that has happened both times now.

1) The machine has a metal look, but wow is most if it plastic. The doors are a bit light. They do the job I guess (no idea how well they are sealing) but you would not want to rough house the opening and closing.

2) The hose onto the shank, as I mentioned before, that should have been secured. No idea how they missed that as I found it on my very first heffeweisen I hooked up.

3) Both times now I have attempted to hook the beer back up, the whole thing has made a pretty large mess. If someone had this in their kitchen it could get down right annoying, but since my SWMBO does not visit my beer cave, I hope she won't notice. Some pics of the messes.





Lastly, there was one mistake I made, but then I could see how others would make it too. When I was hooking the line up to the regulator. Pics of before and after...





4) Each machine only comes with one of those filler caps. That is fine if you only ever want to have one beer, run it out, go find another. But if you are planning ahead, you have to buy more caps yourself.

5) Seems I was misreading the map they have of breweries on the site. You would 'assume', since I cannot find a legend, that all the colored marks on the map would be breweries that fill. They are not. They basically only list all the breweries 'around' your area. The 'grey' icons, yes the GREY icons are the ones that fill. IN ANY DAMN PROGRAMMING WORLD A GREYED OUT BUTTON IS...what? what is it class...INACTIVE, yes, right. So I have two filling points in a major metro area. ((This was the reason I bought the thing, I watched the map get updated so I said what the heck.))

Next test will be conditioning my own beer in these baggies. I have two dry hopping now that will be ready soon. If that doesn't work, then I will have to rethink this.

Thanks for the update/write up. I'll be following it closely. I almost bought one, but it got a lot bigger from the prototype. I'm still thinking about it, but seems like waiting for gen 2 may be the best play.

Those 22 oz bottles will last me another year....

And to the other folks on the thread:
1) no way is She Who Must Be Obeyed going to allow a keg system in the house, especially not when I explain about how I will be drilling holes in the fridge.
2) I have read all kinds of reviews about these other nonkegkegs. Beer seems to go bad, co2 leaks, etc...

Ordered one over 2 months ago. Still have not received it or a refund. Nor any real explanation of why the delay or when it would ship. My advice is don't buy.

Latest report is that mine will ship on Friday. This is not the first time I have told that it will ship soon.

There have also been many QC issues with this device. Dealing with those issues may be the reason for so many shipping delays. The regulator appears to be up to version four already.

I still have a lot of hope for this toy, but not nearly as much hope as I once did.

whovous said:

Latest report is that mine will ship on Friday. This is not the first time I have told that it will ship soon.

There have also been many QC issues with this device. Dealing with those issues may be the reason for so many shipping delays. The regulator appears to be up to version four already.

I still have a lot of hope for this toy, but not nearly as much hope as I once did.

Click to expand...

I actually never got a clear answer on my regulator. Which one I got vs what is avail. I know that the CO2 canisters are not keeping the beer carbonated. They are barely pushing the beer out.

First paragraph of 10-21 email from Synek:

"We finally received the last missing piece – our mass shipment of generation 4 regulators. Now, we’ve got more than half of the company repacking thousands of units in preparation for your personal ship date. Before shipping, we need confirm a few details."

I've done a bit of reading on this, but have not actually seen or touched a Synek. My understanding is that one connection is not at all explained. You have to unscrew a connector (from the regulator?), put the unscrewed piece on the hose, the hose on the barb, and then screw the unscrewed piece back on. That is a miserable description, I know, but I hope you can make sense of it, and that it might help.

You may want to contact them about getting a new regulator. If you have had yours for a while, it is not a "gen 4".

Oh, one other thing. I read somewhere that the unit is not intended to carb up uncarbed beer. You may be asking it to do something it does not do.

whovous said:

I've done a bit of reading on this, but have not actually seen or touched a Synek. My understanding is that one connection is not at all explained. You have to unscrew a connector (from the regulator?), put the unscrewed piece on the hose, the hose on the barb, and then screw the unscrewed piece back on. That is a miserable description, I know, but I hope you can make sense of it, and that it might help.

Click to expand...

Yep, there is a compression fitting that was not set up when I got mine. It's in the first set of pics on page one.

Also note that I put an actual hose fitting on that does not come with it. The hose that goes into tap shank is not secure and slips off.

whovous said:

Oh, one other thing. I read somewhere that the unit is not intended to carb up uncarbed beer. You may be asking it to do something it does not do.

Click to expand...

Not asking it to carb, but I have a Heffe in there. It had NO head by the second or third pour a day or two later.

Oh, that sounds bad. The original idea was that you could drink half a bag, switch to another beer, and leave that half bag in the fridge for a few weeks with no bad results. Your result sounds no better than a growler. I wonder if my Gen 4 regulator will do any better. Of course, I also wonder if I will even receive the freaking thing, given the number of people that have been told various stories about these things. I want to believe that they are trying, but...

To me, this looks like a lot of work and expense to fill 8 pint glasses. At $2 per gallon for the bags, it doesn't seem very cost effective, at least not for homebrew. A 2.5 gallon mini keg in the refrigerator would be much more cost effective.

Now, as an alternative to growlers from local breweries that need to be consumed right away, it might make sense.

It was marketed as an alternative to growlers - - homebrewers were more of an afterthought. But it does not seem to be working very well for sablesurfer period.

Hey Sablesurfer,

I plan to unpack my unit soon. Any advice or conclusions on using the baggies to condition a homebrew? I have a batch ready to bottle tonight, and I am wondering if I should try doing part of it in a baggie, or if I will just be wasting a bag and my brew. Also, just how do you fill a baggie from a fermenter or a bottling bucket?

I only just got my order of extra caps the other day. So I haven't had chance to do that yet.

Had mine for a month or two only used once with a bag filled at the brewery where I picked it up. Worked fine but the bag split when beer was gone. I didn't remove the bag right away. Bag split and all CO2 leaked. Tanks are same as paintball so I was able to get mine refilled for $4 at a paintball place, sporting goods stores may also fill these but the home brew store or beer distributor will not be able to fill, most likely. Different fittings.

Finally got my tap attachment so I can bag some homebrew from the tap and take with me to parties. Unit looks great and is not too heavy. Bag caps are back ordered and this is a great example of a company overwhelmed by their product's success. Nice people, funny videos, zero business acumen (IMHO)!

There is a short discussion of this topic on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Synek/comments/3m33l4/filling_synek_bag_with_homebrew/?sort=old

Two interesting comments from there:
+++++
I tried to carbonate a pale ale in the bag without the dispensing cap on it, after a couple of days the bag sprung a leak due to not being able to take the pressure. My guess is that to use it for homebrew I'll need to buy some more of those dispensing caps that have the pressure release on them. The standard bags that they send you only have standard caps and no pressure release. I'm going to e-mail them today to see if I can buy more of the dispensing type caps.
+++++

and

+++++
Picked my system up in Dallas, but had just bottled, so I'm just now getting around to filling some bags. I talked to several of the guys at the launch party and confirmed that a "functional cap" is required on each bag you'll want to condition in. So far, haven't heard back on getting a discount for bulk orders of caps (I assume I'll want 10-20), but I bought 2 extra that day.
+++++

At $15 a pop, that seems like an awful lot of caps. Still, it sounds like it is at least doable, and that unlike the bags, the caps should at least be fully reusable. I know it is possible to reuse the bags, too, but I am not so sure I want to try that as I do not know how to be sure the inside of the bag is clean and fully purged of air.

In any case, I suppose I need to order at least a few of these puppies.

I also need to figure out how I am going to fill these bags with homebrew. I use a BrewDemon conical fermenter.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCC50BC/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Should I be able to connect the Universal Fill Kit to the BrewDemon tap in some fashion?
http://synek.beer/products/backorder-double-fill-kit

Also, I wonder about buying a backup CO2 tank to have on hand in case I have the bad luck of draining a tank by accident, as it appears some people have done. Do I need to buy one with the Synek logo (on backorder like everything else), or is this something I can get at any paintball store?

Oh, one more question: Does the tank that came in my still unopened Synek box come filled or empty? I'd hate to think I was already to get started with this toy only to learn that I was out of gas.

whovous said:

Also, I wonder about buying a backup CO2 tank to have on hand in case I have the bad luck of draining a tank by accident, as it appears some people have done. Do I need to buy one with the Synek logo (on backorder like everything else), or is this something I can get at any paintball store?

Click to expand...

The regulator is designed to just screw onto the neck of the paintball canister. This is good because I already had two from previous. (First set up required that adapter to be screwed onto paintball canister so it fit full sized regulators.)

whovous said:

Oh, one more question: Does the tank that came in my still unopened Synek box come filled or empty? I'd hate to think I was already to get started with this toy only to learn that I was out of gas.

Click to expand...

Mine was partially filled. Not sure they should have planned to ship it that way, but <shrug>.

So, this is the same size as a paintball cannister then, right?

whovous said:

So, this is the same size as a paintball cannister then, right?

Click to expand...

As the 22oz'rs, but the smaller ones have same neck size.

Thanks, Sablesurfer. I know precisely zip about paintball.

wobdee said:

I've been thinking of getting one of these.

http://www.growlerwerks.com/?gclid=...VHr111a-BhwUfv9nnu7f7YxA1C16r4hQLgaAk9l8P8HAQ

Click to expand...

When I see this stuff I think it's insane because in my country the state is the only possible seller of alcohol beverages above 4.7% and bars are not allowed to sell alcohol for consumption outside of their premises. Here a bottle of great divide Titan double ipa 12oz is 7 bucks! I hope one day it ll changes...

P. S: it's funny in the video they dropped the glass growler to show the problem of handling glass but they didn't show what happens if they drop the their growler. Ahah

Some updates on the Synek. I did get my back ordered cap last week. As I was planning next steps...to bag my own beer, or go get new beer...I wondered just how cleanable the caps are.

They are all plastic fittings and because they are spring loaded to keep in pressure, you cannot just dump them in some sanitizer or oxiclean. They fittings 'appeared' to be screwed into the cap. They are, but that doesn't buy you anything in the way of cleaning.



This is what I mean by they are spring loaded. Both the CO2 and beer out valves have a plastic sleeve that has to be depressed.



Once I got that, then I tried to just put them in the sanitizer that I was making for my bottling day. Seems to get things through. The interesting thing will be if I wanted to soak these in oxiclean, then I would feel like I'd have to do this a number of times between soaks.

I also got a new regulator. Kinda mad since I have two machines, and I told the guy on the phone, multiple times. Here is the only difference I can see between what came with machine and what they sent.

See the teflon tape?

Anyway, today was bottling day for a barleywine because I need that glass carboy to age my imperial stout in. I decided, with the new cap, the cap I put back together, lots of extra bags...I would try...

1) One bag forced carbed using the machine. Why not, I figure just attach the back, fill to ?? pressure, take it off and let it sit for a day. They try again, let it sit, then put it in the machine?

2) One bag 'bag' conditioned. Previous poster mentioned about the bag splitting, but I have no idea how that would be possible. If they are not splitting from getting CO2 tank applied to them, then then shouldn't split under normal CO2 volume conditions from, well, conditioning. I set my priming sugar for 1.5volumes.

3) The remaining gallon ('ish) got bottled as normal and will be my base line. I actually expect this to take a long time to carb up because it is close to 11% and was aging for about 3 months now.

Here are some pics.

This is how I filled the bags, I did flush with CO2 as they were filling and the bag opened a bit.



Here are the results. Not sure that the bags actually got a gallon of beer. They just didn't seem to plump up enough?



Here is the forced carb one. I will let it sit at room temp, will hit it again at the line between low and med on the dial. Then pop into the machine.



As for, did it really get a gallon, do we have any fluid dynamics engineers that can tell what a gallon of 11% barleywine should weigh?

Last update today...yeah, ALL the hose joins seem to leak easily. I mentioned before that I already applied a hose clamp to the tap shank connection. Today as I tried to add some pressure to my homebrew in a bag, this happened. Check the pressure setting.

I am happy to see you documenting all of this. It will give me a better idea of what to expect when I finally try this myself. Let me try to give this a positive spin:

1. The sanitizing routine does not look all that hard, and I don't think you should ever need to OxyClean if you sanitize before and after every use. Chances are good I won't sanitize at all, but that is only because I have not yet had a batch go bad on me due to lax cleansing standards.
2. The regulators might have internal differences, or the later one might be manufactured to a higher tolerance. Sending one instead of two is not so good, but it is a curable error.
3. I think these links will let you sort out the weight of an 11% ABV solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_by_volume
http://beer.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/by-volume-by-weight-conversion-formula

But that is all I've got. A gallon of water weighs 8.33 lbs. A gallon of pure ethanol weighs 6.59 lbs. Your "gallon" appears to weigh just under 5.25 lbs. That is .63 of the weight of a gallon of water, and .80 of the weight of a gallon of pure ethanol. Without doing the math above, it is safe to say you are well short of a gallon there. That is not a life or death matter, but neither is it a good thing.

And the leak at the CO2 hose? What kind of shoddy materials are they providing here? Assuming you've used another clamp here, and further assuming that clamp worked, can you tell me what kind of clamp you used? I may as well have some on hand before the unboxing ceremony.

I look forward to learning the results of your forced carbing and bag aging experiments.

Ah...well I should have asked Yooper..."It takes about 10-14 days to fully carb up." I have never force carbed before. I filled bag with CO2 at Med, refilled it next day because it had absorbed some into beer. It was a bit squishy again today, but I went ahead and attached the back to the machine.
Got over excited and poured myself some flat beer. Oh well, mixing it with a New Belgium Abbey to get carbonation and the flavors match pretty well.

Can you continue to force carb, or is it too little too late? It sounds like force carbing is not much faster than bottle carbing.

sablesurfer said:

I filled bag with CO2 at Med, refilled it next day because it had absorbed some into beer. It was a bit squishy again today, but I went ahead and attached the back to the machine...

Click to expand...

It sounds like you might be force carbing room-temp beer - is that right? Unless you're at a MUCH higher pressure than usual it seems like that may be putting unneeded pressure on your bag. Also it sounds like you're disconnecting the co2 between fills - am I correct? If so then that will take a very long time to carbonate. You want to leave the gas on until it reaches equilibrium, that is pretty hard to do if you're taking it off the gas often.

Ok, update on force carbing. There are no numbers on these dials. Just Low, Med, and High. The literature doesn't recommend High. I have been carbing the barleywine for just over two weeks now at the bottom end of Med. I figured, if Med was recommended for regular beers, then I'd see what low Med would do. (Edit - once it was in machine and on permanent pressure, I still had to turn the dial because as CO2 was absorbed the needle would drop[?])

Here is a pic of the barleywine. VERY low carbonation. Could be ok in a classical style way, but I would want to at least see some head during the pour. Hmmm.



Now, if the bottles of this actually prime, will be a pretty darn good barleywine!

Ok, I pinged with a question that was a good one, so thought I'd add a couple more pics.

Can you just hook the bags up to your own keg system? That way use decent 1gal growlers on your system.

Well, I don't think so. Well not with just the straight equipment you get with a bag and cap. Not even having the bar's filling connections would work. (I don't think, but others please clarify if I have it wrong.)

There are two connectors on the back lid. They are different sizes. The beer out is bigger than the air in. At first I thought you could just hack up a bar filling kit to get the connector, but they actually fill through the beer out, so you wouldn't get the smaller connector to hook to your system.

Here are pictures of the connectors. If these are standard, then that would actually be kinda cool...but I have no experience with the world of quick disconnects other than the stainless ones on my brew system.

This is the lid and male side:


This is the smaller air in connector attached. Not great view, but it is a quick release with that little aluminum paddle depression button.


(As you will see, I do have leakage at this very low pressure. One of the reasons I am returning these machines.)