Craft beer is honestly a bit out of control – people drive very long distances and stand in very long lines, just for a six-pack of some storied brew or other. Clearly, for true enthusiasts, discovering new craft beer is one of life’s great pleasures. I have even traded cans of beer from cult craft breweries in Boston with friends down the coast – but swapping beer by the post can be pricey and probably not quite what UPS or the postal service want people to be doing.
That’s why I was intrigued by the Krups Sub Home Beer Dispenser, rolled out earlier this year at stores across the country. The Krups Sub is for beer what the Keurig is for coffee – a way to get yourself a single perfect pint on demand.
The Sub is a table-top sized draft beer dispenser that cools and keeps fresh mini-kegs of craft beer you can order by mail from Hopsy, a company that packages and sends out beer from dozens of breweries in the U.S. You just insert the recyclable beer mini keg into the Krups Sub and in a while you’ll be able to pour yourself a perfect pint. You can get your mini keg shipped chilled, store it chilled yourself or insert it unchilled, which will take much longer to be ready to pour. With the model Krups sent me to test, in the middle of some of the hottest days this summer it took overnight for the Sub to chill down my beer – a light on the front of the unit turns from red to green when your beer is at optimum temperature to drink. Mini kegs I kept in my wine cooler (so at around 50 degrees) were ready in the Sub must more quickly, in an hour or two. The beer stays fresh for 15 days in the Krups Sub, in case it somehow takes you a couple of weeks to drink a little more than 4 pints of craft beer. But seeing how quickly one needs to suck down a growler for maximum freshness, the option to have a good beer available by draft feels very luxurious.
The fun part, for me, is the multitude of beers and other beverages you can choose from, especially from distant difficult to find craft breweries. There are some 50 breweries working with Hopsy to supply beer, from Moustache, on eastern Long Island, to Alameda Brewing in Oregon and a bunch of places in between. Availability of beer shifts depending on where you live. For me on the East Coast, my selection is filled mostly with New York area microbreweries like Gun Hill in the Bronx and the “nano-scale” brewery Bridge and Tunnel, run by Rich Castagna out of Queens. In addition to beer there’s also kombucha, cold brew coffee and cider, the last from the well-regarded Austin Eastciders. People who live on the West Coast and Midwest see a selection of Bay Area and Chicago breweries, respectively. There also are some better-known names working with Hopsy too, including Sierra Nevada, Bierra Moretti, Yuengling, and Heineken, which recently was selling a limited edition lager from a rare mother yeast it found in Patagonia.
Beer can be bought through Hopsy’s website when you want or through a beer club, which costs $60 a month for four mini-kegs. The club requires a three-month commitment. You can build your taste profile on the website, so then Hopsy will recommend beer for you each month. You answer a suitably odd series of multiple choice questions on your preferences (“You’re walking through a forest…” and “You’re stuck on a desert island. Pick One…”) and Hopsy will point you to styles of beer you should enjoy. But you’re welcome to swap out with what else they have available at any time. You choose the delivery date and can change the date at will with delivery coming in one or two business days.
The Krups Sub is available at stores including Crate & Barrel and Bloomingdales.
