Intertap beer faucets

[augiedoggy]

Giday from Straya,

I've been reading this thread for a while and been looking at all the taps on aliexpress. I'm keen to buy 4 intertap FC's.
I've got a sneaky suspicion that the brewmaster store may be run by kegking and is only selling to countries that they don't have a distributor in.
A lot of the forward sealing clones or originals on ali look to be o.k but I'm yet to find a supplier that have the intertap / perl FC taps, at least one that will sent to Aus.

yes brewmaster had the kegking beergun (which appears to be from the same supplier as blichmann now uses) for $19 right before christmas... I dont think they are kegking but rather a major manufacturer or supplier for them. I noticed a whole bunch of stuff disappeared from thier store about the time the intertaps couldnt be sold here anymore. and thier prices were actually about half of the other aliexpress and ebay sellers prices which give me an indication how cheap this stuff it really made and sold for... the 6"x 14" 300 micron hop basket for example was $23 with shipping.... and I bought a 6 valve keg co2 manifold for $16..


I have bought the forward sealing perlick clone on ali and the all the components are completely identical only my perlick is chrome coated brass and the cheaper clone is all stainless.. no brainer for me. perhaps if perlick wasnt so greedy with their chinese made taps they likely pay $5 each for manufacturing I would be more inclined to buy from them .. sme with the intertaps.. they feel they are the only game in town so they are just charging what they can get which is no realistic relation to actual manufacturing costs. I get it but I also dont feel bad for the fact that competition is creeping in via clones or variant or not....I know others may see if differently but sometimes theres nothing wrong with some good old fashioned capitalism to make pricing more competitive like it was before aoo the patents, politics, monopolies and such came along

 

[Dog House Brew]

Vent-Matic ripped me off when they went under. I hope they never get a cent or ever produce faucets again.

 

[PapaO]

yes brewmaster had the kegking beergun (which appears to be from the same supplier as blichmann now uses) for $19 right before christmas... I dont think they are kegking but rather a major manufacturer or supplier for them. I noticed a whole bunch of stuff disappeared from thier store about the time the intertaps couldnt be sold here anymore. and thier prices were actually about half of the other aliexpress and ebay sellers prices which give me an indication how cheap this stuff it really made and sold for... the 6"x 14" 300 micron hop basket for example was $23 with shipping.... and I bought a 6 valve keg co2 manifold for $16..


I have bought the forward sealing perlick clone on ali and the all the components are completely identical only my perlick is chrome coated brass and the cheaper clone is all stainless.. no brainer for me. perhaps if perlick wasnt so greedy with their chinese made taps they likely pay $5 each for manufacturing I would be more inclined to buy from them .. sme with the intertaps.. they feel they are the only game in town so they are just charging what they can get which is no realistic relation to actual manufacturing costs. I get it but I also dont feel bad for the fact that competition is creeping in via clones or variant or not....I know others may see if differently but sometimes theres nothing wrong with some good old fashioned capitalism to make pricing more competitive like it was before aoo the patents, politics, monopolies and such came along

So if you come up with a new product I want to be you’re manufacture. You would do all the R&D, prototyping, preproduction cost, paying for patents, advertising, distribution and the list goes on. I could charge you $5 apiece for a production run of 10,000. It cost me $2 each so I get $3 profit each Thank You. So in order to make a profit you charge $30. Would you care if I made 5,000 more and sold them for $25. After all it only cost you $5 apiece. Let’s call it what it is counterfeit not competition.
PapaO
YMMV ( your morals may vary )

 

[augiedoggy]

So if you come up with a new product I want to be you’re manufacture. You would do all the R&D, prototyping, preproduction cost, paying for patents, advertising, distribution and the list goes on. I could charge you $5 apiece for a production run of 10,000. It cost me $2 each so I get $3 profit each Thank You. So in order to make a profit you charge $30. Would you care if I made 5,000 more and sold them for $25. After all it only cost you $5 apiece. Let’s call it what it is counterfeit not competition.
PapaO
YMMV ( your morals may vary )

Your right if I wanted to develop and sell a product I wouldnt have someone else make it for me overseas I would make them myself with american workers. If I was really greedy and I did send the plans I had some college cad student draw up in autocad to china, knowing they have no respect for patents and such I would expect them to sell it direct as well... Afterall they are the ones who spent all the money for tooling and such to actually make the stuff... These taps came from a couple days work with autocad borrowing much of the design from other taps like taprite and perlick and yes ventomatic so its not like they are some sort of new invention that took a lot of money and R&D.
I dont think something that costs $5 to manufacture should be sold for $50-60 myself so yeah theres that.
Who invented the first lcd tv? what about the car? who had the first smart phone and for how long were they exclusive? Everyone steals and copies, its just easier when someone thats too greedy to do it themselves sends it overseas to be made for pennies on the dollar by someone else to get taken for a ride.... Hell isnt this discussion a bit hypocritical because I am under the impression "intertap" stole ventomatics patent and design in the first place if you want to look at it that way... Theres a thing that was invented by someone "ventamatic" who couldnt market it successfully and flopped if I have the story right... but years later they are still trying to profit from anyone who might try to market anything that they think resembles their idea enough to do so legally whether they stole it or just reinvented something similiar because it makes sense logically.

Did you ever wonder why some things seem to improve so slowly and why some better designs arent more commonly used in products... Because someone bought or owns the intellectual rights/ patents and they may be holding up progress / development... I think this is why the FEDS dont recognize patents in some cases.. lots of ways to look at it. The idea behind a patent is good but so is building your own products instead of having a competitor do it for you.

 

[treacheroustexan]

Didn't read through this thread, but i just replaced two of my cheaper faucets with intertaps and couldn't be happier. Beer is pouring great!

 

[Bobbybob]

Your right if I wanted to develop and sell a product I wouldnt have someone else make it for me overseas I would make them myself with american workers. If I was really greedy and I did send the plans I had some college cad student draw up in autocad to china, knowing they have no respect for patents and such I would expect them to sell it direct as well... Afterall they are the ones who spent all the money for tooling and such to actually make the stuff... These taps came from a couple days work with autocad borrowing much of the design from other taps like taprite and perlick and yes ventomatic so its not like they are some sort of new invention that took a lot of money and R&D.
I dont think something that costs $5 to manufacture should be sold for $50-60 myself so yeah theres that.
Who invented the first lcd tv? what about the car? who had the first smart phone and for how long were they exclusive? Everyone steals and copies, its just easier when someone thats too greedy to do it themselves sends it overseas to be made for pennies on the dollar by someone else to get taken for a ride.... Hell isnt this discussion a bit hypocritical because I am under the impression "intertap" stole ventomatics patent and design in the first place if you want to look at it that way... Theres a thing that was invented by someone "ventamatic" who couldnt market it successfully and flopped if I have the story right... but years later they are still trying to profit from anyone who might try to market anything that they think resembles their idea enough to do so legally whether they stole it or just reinvented something similiar because it makes sense logically.

Did you ever wonder why some things seem to improve so slowly and why some better designs arent more commonly used in products... Because someone bought or owns the intellectual rights/ patents and they may be holding up progress / development... I think this is why the FEDS dont recognize patents in some cases.. lots of ways to look at it. The idea behind a patent is good but so is building your own products instead of having a competitor do it for you.

The patent system is broken in several ways. First and formost is the extremely litigious nature of the entire system. The early system was suppose to protect the rich investor, who put up the money for design/tooling/creation/taxes, of product "X", not the next guy who takes it apart and figures out how it works. Now it is more profitable to buy ideas and wait for someone to need "your" idea.

I agree that it a little absurd to pay ten times the material cost, but it is the way of a capitalistic world. I would be willing to bet it would cost 15 times the matierial cost here in the states as it does from china.

I have two of the flow control intertap faucets and my only complaint is that they don't do as good a job of controlling foam as my perlic's.

 

[augiedoggy]

now that you mention it I have noticed the flow control on my cheaper generic kegking tap like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/Draft-Beer-...296534?hash=item41b66a5696:g:OuoAAOSwjDZYgBbJ does seem to work better to cut down on the foam... of course these use a different cone in the shank design to do so. these are a good design as well but I have had mine slightly stick a couple times... and they use a non standard "G8" sized shank.. the funny thing was mine were bought as "Kegking" brand the same brand that markets the intertaps..


EDIT so I was unaware but after doing some reading I see the intertaps are almost the same as the defunct perlick 425 facuets mentioned in the more beer sponsored article.... So thats 3 different companies who have sold variations of these. Anyone know who actually designed them? perlick or vent matic? I remember reading about some sort of patent war in the past between these companies but didnt realize what it was about..

 

[claypot]

now that you mention it I have noticed the flow control on my cheaper generic kegking tap like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/Draft-Beer-...296534?hash=item41b66a5696:g:OuoAAOSwjDZYgBbJ does seem to work better to cut down on the foam... of course these use a different cone in the shank design to do so. these are a good design as well but I have had mine slightly stick a couple times... and they use a non standard "G8" sized shank.. the funny thing was mine were bought as "Kegking" brand the same brand that markets the intertaps..


EDIT so I was unaware but after doing some reading I see the intertaps are almost the same as the defunct perlick 425 facuets mentioned in the more beer sponsored article.... So thats 3 different companies who have sold variations of these. Anyone know who actually designed them? perlick or vent matic? I remember reading about some sort of patent war in the past between these companies but didnt realize what it was about..

I just found a very interesting post on an Irish forum in regards to the patent dispute....
The following is copied from it. (oct 2016) and makes me further suspect brewmaster is kegking, which is pretty crap if it is. As they are prepared to sell the FC taps for $48 AU ex China, but not to Aussies who have to pay $70 AU.

Originally Posted by Turb
I contacted Keg King directly to see if there was any way around not having a US distributor and this is the response I recieved...

Hi Douglas,
We currently can't sell the Intertaps in the US due to a patent dispute. We currently sell the Intertap taps in Australia and they are also being sold from Keg King Shanghai Distribution center. Neither of these locations are governed by any active patents on forward sealing taps that Bradford G. Amidzich owns.

We did contact Brad last week regarding this and also have him specific information showing several forward sealing models that have been sold in Australia dating back as far as the 1940s. These other forward sealing models that have been sold in Australia clearly show that Brad's Ventmatic taps were not the first forward sealing designs and also we have reason to believe that his patents in America can be invalidated based on this information. If a thorough enough prior arts search been carried out it would have revealed these common forward sealing models in Australia and the patent would not have been granted in the first place. With that said he still does have an active patent granted by the USPTO so it will take at least several months if not more than a year to get these patents invalidated if we do go down this path.

We have also voice another option to not invalidate the patent and simply pay a royalty in America however we have not heard back from Brad regarding this so we can only assume that he is not going to entertain this as an option.

If we do not hear from Brad in a reasonable amount of time we will commence legal action to have his patents invalidated.
Cheers,

Aran Burns
Customer Service Manager
Keg King – Keg Dispense Specialists

 

[UndeadFred]

I will quickly state that I did get two Flow Control chrome plated Stainless taps from MoreBeer. One of them was pretty perfect right out of the box, the other greatly benefited from a work over with 1000 grit sandpaper, just like the non flow control I bought from "Brewmaster" in China previously. I did end up fluffing and buffing both of them and I did get one online last night.

I had to shorten the length of the line to about 4' or so from the 10' I had for the balance. (3/16" LDPE). Once I did that I had a pretty nice range that resulted in a "normal" pour compared to the same level of carbonation and flow as the non flow control Intertap on the beer next to it, at about the 80% setting.

I was actually quite surprised in how much the flow was reduced even with the valve set to "fully open".. it's like the same as about 5' of 3/16" line, actually. But it seems to work fine with the much shorter line in my setup, so overall I am happy. I took the opportunity to take apart and clean the 630PC's that I am now going to get rid of, and side by side, the quality of the Intertaps is almost as good as the Perlicks on the outside, the internals when you compare one with the other really show what a kludge that the ball and floating O-ring design is. I'm eventually going to buy one more, probably non-FC Intertap and get my 525SS's out of the system as well.

You do need to tweak the Intertaps a little, and probably more than you should for the price, but once you get them there, they are pretty darned nice.

 

[augiedoggy]

Thats kind of funny because I got the FC units (from brewmaster) because my lines are too short (around 5ft) and I wanted to be able to get decent carbonation levels along with a fairly foam free pour. I use a small kegerator and theres barely enough room for 3 kegs let alone 15 ft of beer line and the co2 tank setup.

 

[day_trippr]

I wanted to thank the person who recently stated unequivocally that the Intertap springs would work with other brands of forward-sealing faucets and non-Intertap shanks.
For the life of me I can't find that post among the various Intertap threads, but hopefully (s)he will stumble on this and accept my "Thank You!".

I have six first-generation 525SS Perls that have always worked flawlessly, but the design can confuse guests. I've watched someone pull a pour, then let go of the handle and take the glass away, as they assumed the faucet is self-closing.
It's actually worse with people who have operated a faucet before: their experience was with rear-seal faucets - which are self-closing.

That post convinced me it was worth giving the springs a try with my generic SS shanks and the 525's, and sure enough, they work great! And the springs do not affect the pour (I've poured through all taps multiple times over the last few days now to make sure. Woof )

Could not be more pleased.

Cheers!

 

[imasickboy]

I wanted to thank the person who recently stated unequivocally that the Intertap springs would work with other brands of forward-sealing faucets and non-Intertap shanks.
For the life of me I can't find that post among the various Intertap threads, but hopefully (s)he will stumble on this and accept my "Thank You!".

You are most welcome.

 

[day_trippr]

That's the one

And thank you kindly!

 

[okiedog]

Flow control faucets must make it easy to get the right flow for each beer. I don't have flow control, but so far, I have been able to have suitable flow by using varying lengths of beer line: 5, 6 or 7 feet.

 

[indolent]

It's actually worse with people who have operated a faucet before: their experience was with rear-seal faucets - which are self-closing.

Maybe I'm reading your post wrong, but not all rear seal faucets are self closing.

I can't say I've ever had a person pour from my taps and left them open because they thought they were self closing.

 

[augiedoggy]

Maybe I'm reading your post wrong, but not all rear seal faucets are self closing.

I can't say I've ever had a person pour from my taps and left them open because they thought they were self closing.

I would agree with you, although I would think this would depend on whether your used to more expensive setups or stuff found in regular bars. I myself never operated a self closing tap (besides my stout tap) until I bought my first 3 tap tower on ebay a year ago. I thought it was great only the cheap taprite style taps would stick something fierce so I use the springs in the perlick and chinese perlick clone I bought instead.

 

[treacheroustexan]

Does anyone have the growler filler attachment? Would this work ok enough to fill 12 oz bottles? Not worried about oxidation or anything as i would only be filling for friends and competitions, no long term storage.

 

[augiedoggy]

Does anyone have the growler filler attachment? Would this work ok enough to fill 12 oz bottles? Not worried about oxidation or anything as i would only be filling for friends and competitions, no long term storage.

I have it and used it to fill 22oz flip top bottles without an issue.. the key was to fill it very high and cap with still full of foam.

 

[eulipion2]

Does anyone have the growler filler attachment? Would this work ok enough to fill 12 oz bottles? Not worried about oxidation or anything as i would only be filling for friends and competitions, no long term storage.

The tubing from a Perlick 600 series filler can fit inside the tubing from the Intertap - the thing's huge! That said, the Perlick filler fits perfectly into the standard Intertap spout. That's what I use, and I've had a lot of luck with it.

 

[treacheroustexan]

The tubing from a Perlick 600 series filler can fit inside the tubing from the Intertap - the thing's huge! That said, the Perlick filler fits perfectly into the standard Intertap spout. That's what I use, and I've had a lot of luck with it.

Have you filled any 12 oz bottles or just growlers?

 

[eulipion2]

Have you filled any 12 oz bottles or just growlers?

I've only filled 12 oz bottles. It's a little tight for my liking. The Perlick filler tubing is similar in size to a traditional bottling wand. The Intertap is much bigger.

 

[treacheroustexan]

I've only filled 12 oz bottles. It's a little tight for my liking. The Perlick filler tubing is similar in size to a traditional bottling wand. The Intertap is much bigger.

Awesome to hear, thanks! I hate hooking my beer gun up because i only fill one or two bottles at a time.

 

[The_Bishop]

3/8 silicone tubing fits on the Intertap growler filler without being too large, and works well for filling bottles.

 

[augiedoggy]

3/8 silicone tubing fits on the Intertap growler filler without being too large, and works well for filling bottles.

This is what I use thin wall silicone tubing.

 

[UndeadFred]

Thats kind of funny because I got the FC units (from brewmaster) because my lines are too short (around 5ft) and I wanted to be able to get decent carbonation levels along with a fairly foam free pour. I use a small kegerator and theres barely enough room for 3 kegs let alone 15 ft of beer line and the co2 tank setup.

Five feet of line into the taps probably would have worked fine too. Perfect would have been at the 90% setting in that case I suppose. I do like them. The only problem is I was playing with the setup so much that night that.. well.. I was a little hung over the next day.... sigh....

 

[Radboud]

Looks like our friend Brewsmaster has pulled the faucets from his store again.

 

[augiedoggy]

Looks like our friend Brewsmaster has pulled the faucets from his store again.

For sale in other countries too? or are you just talking about the fact that he cant ship to the US anymore?

EDIT I see they are no longer in his store at all now. You have to wonder if this thread or the inquiries from it have something to do with it..

 

[treacheroustexan]

This is what I use thin wall silicone tubing.

Thanks guys. I'l go this route. Just ordered some 3/8" silicone tubing and the growler filler.

 

[augiedoggy]

So my new tap arrived from aliepress...
It is a perlick clone and the interchangable tips are the same threads as the intertaps.... they used the ball and oring design. Mine appears to be built very well of solid stainless... its the same as the unbranded perlick I bought this summer only with the changable tip.

 

[augiedoggy]

How can you tell? I didn't see a single shot of the guts...

Cheers!

FYI it is the perlick design