Dutch Design (15): The New Heineken 5 L DraughtKeg

Heineken 5L DraughtKeg

I wasn’t aware it is almost completely new, at least for The Netherlands, as it appears it was available earlier in the USA, in Taiwan and in France: The Heineken 5 Liter DraughtKeg.

We hosted a party last Monday and someone took a cooled Heineken 5 L DraughtKeg with him and installed it. I noted the recent transport didn’t create any frothy problem when using it.

Installation was so easy and natural that it seemed the 5 L DraughtKeg was there already for ages…(off course similar systems are already on the market for ages). Not so: The guy who brought the keg is an early adapter.

Today, after having used 7/8 of the 5 liter keg on Monday, I took it out of the fridge and had another couple of nice draught beers.

What is it?
It is a mini disposable double walled beer keg. The assumption it being double walled appeared to be wrong after I had seen a video where they sawed the keg through.

It is pressurized and comes complete with an easy to install tap. Just tap the keg and draw up to 20 glasses of crisp draught beer.

And with Heineken’s patented Intelligent Pressure System, you can be sure every glass, from first to last will be perfect.

Getting Started:

It comes with a very simple plastic tap mechanism in a blister pack on top of it and picture instructions showing how to use it.

Heineken 5L DraughtKeg Tap

Chill the keg for at least 10 hours in your fridge.

Remove the tap components from the blister pack on top of the keg.

Remove the green plastic closing cap from the top of the keg.

Snap the ring on top of the keg.

Place the mini tap in the center of the ring.

Details:

After first use the beer stays fresh for 30 days when stored in the fridge.

You can take off the tap and re apply it.

You can store it on its site in the fridge.

No froth forming as with the traditional large keg in a tap installation.

Some foaming during the initial pour is normal. It should settle down after that. For best results, the beer should be cooled for at least 10 hours at 2-5 degrees Centigrade (40-45 degrees Fahrenheit). Do not store at temperatures above 35 degrees Centigrade (95 degrees Fahrenheit). Do not shake the keg before usage. Make sure your glasses are rinsed and cool.

Some considerations

There have been miniature beer kegs around for years, but thus far the tap mechanisms were horrible in use and you would hardly ever get the (at least in The Netherlands required) two fingers froth on your beer.

Apparently Taiwan served as a test market and the first 1,000 kegs imported were sold within two weeks (source Nation Multimedia).

Heineken introduced the Beertender in 2004 together with Krupps. Later Philips followed with a similar system in cooperation with Inbev. It sold tremendously, but the disadvantage was that chilling the beer in the beertender took a long time and storing a half used keg was only possible inside the beertender. So I take it that the introduction of this new 5L DraughtKeg will eat the market of this Beertender.

Dutch seafront bars are already complaining that the they sell less beer because of the 5L DraughtKeg (you have 3 to 4 hours of really nice cool beer after taking it from your fridge). The real reason is off course they charge horrible for a glass of draught beer.

Most important consideration: It is much handier than slaving with crates with bottles.

Most important question: Is it sustainable? Heineken claims it is recyclable….

Sources
More on Heineken Com

More multimedia about the DraughtKeg: Party Heineken

More on the USA introduction at Free Republic

DraughtKeg on YouTube:

On YouTube I found this instructive video about how to install the DraughtKeg. I do not exactly know which language it is, can somebody help me out?:


How to use it

This video hilariously addresses the old problems the DraughKeg solves:


What frothy problems it solves

Two Dutchmen hilariously addresses the sustainability problem: What to do with a shed of used DraughtKegs?


What to do with the empty DraughtKeg

It seems the last one is produced by Heineken itself.

The funny thing is that in order to see video on the Heineken site (Yuck a site entirely in Flash) you have to give some proof of your age whereas no such thing is asked by YouTube…..

Happy Hotelier banned from Facebook?

Your account has been disabled by an administrator. Please contact disabled@facebook.com from your login email for more information.

That is the message I get on my login page after I have invited a couple of fellow members of the T-List group on Facebook (Facebook | T-List Group) as friends. I really don’t know what I did wrong. Did I invite too many fellow T-Listers in one session? If that is the case, it would be helpful if one got a warning in the inviting process, such as MyBlogLog does by simply indicating that you are linking to too many persons for the day after they had to limit the daily hooking up to a maximum of 20 because frequent hooking up generated too much traffic on their site. I didn’t keep count of the number of invites I sent, but it were maybe 12 or 15 invites, on a total number of group members of not more that 35 or 38 and several members are (or better said maybe “were”) on my Friends list already.

I have send an e-mail inquiry as suggested, even two, but am getting nothing else back than an automatic reply that they “are looking into it and will answer as soon as possible”.

Thereafter I noted several times that the site was not approachable. Are they facing capacity problems or are they maybe subject to a hackers attack and trying to plug the holes? I can imagine that, like credit card companies, Facebook has tons of information that hackers would drivel about. There are already some rumors in the Blog community that the information Facebook collects makes it very vulnerable for identity theft.

By this action Facebook has definitely sunken on my radar and on my list of possible platforms for building a T-List and a L-List Community. Isn’t that what communities are about: Linking with as much as possible people with the same passion?

Post Alia (added August 3, 2007)

Facebook reinstated me yesterday and explained that a Facebook user is not allowed to send the same text several times as such could be construed as spam…..that is exactly what I did with several invites. No warning was given, at least not noticed by me. The site was on and off, so maybe that caused the problem of not showing the warning. Sending several invites without text is not considered as spam. I still don’t get it…..

Something to say about life in The Netherlands

Something to say about Living in The Netherlands

When traveling I am in favor of primary city hopping and I usually try to get information about 4 distinctive areas of interest:

  1. How to travel from A to B? Like: by plane, train, car or by boat? (I hate buses).
  2. How is B looking? Maps, pictures and descriptions (what you usually look for in a paper guide)
  3. How are the people of B?
  4. Things to do in B? Bars, restaurants, theaters, musea, scenic parts

With respect to all areas it is very easy to get tons of information via the Internet except for question 3: “How are the people of B?”. The more I surf around, the more I believe the expat Blogging community is the community to revert to: They give you a wonderful insight in the idiosyncrasies of the people you will meet in B.

One example of what I mean with idiosyncrasies can be found in this post : 51 Tips: An irreverent guide to international travel behavior from the Los Angeles Times (via The Worldhum Travel Zeitgeist): a simple list of do’s and don’ts in various countries.

One of my aims with this Blog is to make foreigners more aware of how the Dutch are. Therefore, I like to introduce you to an expat living in The Hague: Jenn in Holland, living in The Hague, who describes her adventures sometimes in a hilarious way in her Blog Something to say about Life in The Netherlands. Enjoy reading.

Qbic Amsterdam: First guest reviews are in!

Qbic Hotelroom
Photo (or artist impression?) thanks to the Trip
Advisor review mentioned below.

I announced the Qbic Hip Hotels concept in a post in November last year.

Since the news of their belated opening I have been looking for guest reviews for Qbic Amsterdam.

Now they are out:

  • One on Tripadvisor:

    Wow!

    I paid €59 per night (all taxes included), and got to stay in a cool design hotel and sleep in a Hästens bed. That’s what I call a good deal.

    The room was really cool. A unit with the bed, and bathroom connected put into the space. And even the wallpaper included information on a local bar and store in the city. Really handy and smart.

    Really for me Qbic offers amazing quality and the best price in the market.

    t is not in the city center but in the World Trade Center. But with public transport it was easy to get into town. Just about 15mins…

    I am hooked. From here on I am at QBic whenever I go to Amsterdam…

    A solo traveler from Barcelona, age 25-34

  • Six on the site of Booking.com. They publish them as soon as they have six reviews to prevent biased outcomes…therefor we had to wait. It also appears from the reviews that for guests they opened July 4.

    1 Guest score: 7 out of 10

    + Very clean and modern rooms, and extremely comfortable bed. Helpful staff aided check-in process and switching of rooms when problems discovered. Soothing and comfortable shower with huge overhead spigot in addition to hand held spigot.

    – Wireless Internet didn’t work in first room tried. No hooks for towels in bathroom. Some rooms have no windows. Televisions mounted on walls at such an angle as to make in-bed viewing impossible due to screen glare. Water from bathroom tap had slight rubbery taste. Travelling between hotel floors uses same elevators as the rest of WTC visitors. Room climate subject to settings of entire building; no per-room control.

    Anonymous (Solo traveler) from Netherlands – July 12, 2007
    2 Guest score: 9 out of 10

    + a very hip and trendy hotel, god value and the beds sleep excellent

    Enid (With friends) from terheijden, Netherlands – July 7, 2007

    3 Guest score: 9.5 out of 10

    + excellent value for the quality

    – since it was opened for only two days there were some unfinished details that need to be polished.

    Heath (Young couple) from Durango, USA – July 6, 2007

    4 Guest score: 8 out of 10
    + Dee Einrichtung und die tollen Lichter (interior and fancy lighting)

    – Es gab Dusche/WC im Zimmer aber ohne Vorhang/Türe oder irgendwas vor dem WC… (Nur kleines Wändchen wegen dem Wasser/Duschen) (No doors or curtains in front of the WC/shower stall only a tiny provision against shower splatter)

    Christine (With friends) from Liestal, Switzerland – July 19, 2007

    5 Guest score: 10 out of 10

    + Dat je midden in de nacht kan inchecken (possible to check in in the midst of the night)

    – Het ontbijt was goed alleen weinig keuze voor op brood (small choice of things for on your bread)

    Henny (With friends) from Heerenveen, Netherlands – July 10, 2007

    6 Guest score: 8 out of 10

    Wico (Young couple) from sambeek, Netherlands – July 9, 2007

This is not bad, not bad at all! I congratulate Qbic with this success, especially as it looks as if Qbic is sold out continuously.

T-List and L-List: The Next Step: Community Building!

Time for an update on the T-List and the L-List:

First some history:

  • On March 2, 2007 the T-List was launched by Quebec (CAN) based Mathieu Ouellet of Radaron who modeled it after the Z List, originally launched by Mack Collier of Viral garden.

    Mathieu now states in a response to Leeds (UK) based Darren Cronian’s provocative and funny The Death of The T-List:

    I’ve created the T-List for fun and also to see the impact it could have in the tourism&travel bloggers environment.

    If you take a look at my own blog, you’ll see that I talked about the T-List only once since it started. Exactly the same number of times you did. I’m not the hardest defender of the T-list. haha ; )

    I’m bored of the T-List itself but if there is something to remember from it, it’s that there are a lot of tourism & travel bloggers which would like to connect with each other. Is it good or bad? I don’t think there is something bad doing that. I don’t have personally any particular plan about it but I guess that some people do. Good for them.

    I found some interesting blogs/people with it so I’m totally happy 😉

  • Shortly thereafter. on March 7, 2007 Lake District (UK) based Paul Johnson of A Luxury Travel Blog launched the L-List, modeled after the T-List.
  • I have since tried to keep a tab on the development of both lists on my Happy Hotelier deli.icio.us driven page T-List and L-List. Currently I count 185 Blogs on the T-List an 49 Blogs on the L-List.
  • On June 14, 2007 after a quiet period, London (UK) based Kevin May of The Travolution Blog revives the T-List with his post Revisiting the T-List.
  • On June 16, 2007 Keith of Tripcart reorganizes the T-List with his post The T-List Reloaded and presents it in a nice way (a lot of work!).
  • On June 27, 2007 Scott Rains of The Rolling Rains Report copies and pastes this reorganized T-List in his post TripCart Spotlights the T-List.
  • On July 11, 2007 Intermundial shows us The T-List Reloaded.
  • On July 17, 2007 Darren Cronian posts his The Death of the T-List.
  • Also on July 17, 2007 London (UK) based Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel Blogs 2.0 posts a reply in another tongue in cheek post: Battle of the Blogs regarding the T-List.

Sofar the T-List history part and now the community building part of some T-Listers:

  • Barcelona Based Albert Barra had set up Travel in Blogs. I noted this here in my post Travel in Blogs: A new Travel community? and showed some scepsis. Albert replied correctly to my sceptical questions:

    Hello all,
    I’m Albert Barra, I have been reading all comments and articles regarding my blog and TravelinBlogs.com and decided to post to clarify your concerns.

    TravelinBlogs is an idea that came up between me and other bloggers some time ago. It was an idea that was created time ago when we noticed that there were very few interesting blogs about tourism, travel and Hospitality, and we considered it would be a good idea to put them all together or just listing them would be fine.

    The original project was called thBlogs.com and we started with it by posting manually those articles we liked. It has never been an interest on making business out of it.

    Danay, who is actually my wife, runs the site, and the admin user you mentioned is here. There is no machine thing at TravelinBlogs, but just RSS syndication of those blogs we like, and yours is one of them.

    Then came the T-list and we discovered new blogs. Some of them posted about TiB, and traffic increased fast.

    We still understand that having a Digg like project for the Travel and Hospitality would be of interest not just for the readers, but also for the bloggers as it allow them to get noticed and get extra traffic.

    Regarding your concerns about the reason why there are also categories in Spanish, the answer is quite simple, my blog which is considered of the best Spanish hospitality ones is in Spanish. There are also excellent Spanish blogs that deserve being promoted,and we post their articles at the site manually. Since then they are getting new readers from Germany that understand Spanish, and had no idea that those blogs existed. And last, our idea was also creating categories in German where there are also fantastic blogs, and French, but we are not so fluent in those languages to translate the categories.

    I hope I have clarified some of your concerns. You are welcome to visit the site.

    Albert Barra

    I joined the site and rummaged around. Look for yourself to see who from the T-List is also rummaging around. Thus far there is not a lot of communication going on between the contributors.

  • The Beta launch of VibeAgent, who by the way finalized an angel seed round today, also drew some T-Listers as beta testers which resulted in some contacts between them.
  • Then Vancouver Based Chris Clarke, also known as Chrispitality from his Blog Crispitality media Blog, a hotel industry blogger on Vacant Ready who earlier had set up the hilarious site Bed Jump Com as a stand alone which he later syndicated with Hotels by City, launched Hospitality Wiki as an experiment. He couldn’t find a relevant, interesting hospitality-specific online wiki anywhere, so he has created one and asks to participate! You will find some t-Listers there as well. Have a look.
    As a side note: have a look at this bed jumping project mentioned on Worldhum
  • There is another T-Lister who is setting up a T-List aggregator, but I lost the URL. When I find it I will fill it in here.
  • On July 4, 2007 Eric Daams (AKA Dr Pepper), A young Dutchman, living Down Under, who contributes with his brother Peter Daams who also lives Down Under, and with a third Dutchman, probably their oldest brother, Sam Daams (AKA Sam I am), who lives in Norway, to the Blog From the Swiveling Chair from the Travelerspoint travel community a post 12 Blogs I Like.
    Actually the format of this post gives me a great idea! Suppose each T-Lister posts about the 5 best posts he has seen on T-List blogs in the past week, or the past month. Then you get some real synergie! Then you really start building a community!
  • Then, on July 15, 2007 Vancouver (BC) based Jens Traenhart of the Tourism Internet Marketing Blog proposes in an excellent post T-List on Facebook to the T-Listers to join the Facebook | T-List Group. Currently there are 34 members. Have a look!
  • Finally: Off course Paul Johnson couldn’t stay behind and created via The L-List on Facebook the Facebook | L-List Community, currently with 8 members

So those are exciting developments and give plenty a possibility to building T-List and L-List communities. The only question is: which forum will prevail in a couple of months?

Note:
In researching one and another I added some details after the publication date.

Last edited by GJE on December 6, 2011 at 8:38 am