Anyone using a Beer/beverage dispenser with cooling plate

[fuss]

I wondered if anyone has one of these installed on their boat.
A small version of the ones in the pub. They are only slightly bigger than a sodastream.
They seem to make sense in some senarios.

For example, if you liveaboard and brew your own beer or have a sodastream.
These things are like a sodastream, but with cooling and only slightly bigger.

They have the potential to do away with all the cans and bottles that often need to be squashed and removed.
They seem to take up around about the same amount of space.

If, as some people with 2 fridges do, you nearly dedicate one fridge to drinks, then this has the potential to save you energy as well as they only cool what you are about to drink.

The problems I see are buying beer in bulk....
You can get one way disposable kegs that squash flat, they are called keykegs.
The beer industry seems to charge the most for beer in kegs and the least for beer in cans . An example of this is 24 x 500ml cans for 13 Euros.
If a livaboard came across one of these deals , he would buy 5 trays.
Try beating that deal in some other form of beer container.

The upsides are substanially less rubbish to remove each week/month/year.

I know there are more downsides but when you thing about the amount of time people dedicate to beer and softdrinks, whether it be the physical labour of getting the full ones or throwing away the empties or talking about some good deals to be had. People are already investing much time and physical energy anyway.

So I guess another big question is, does anyone know why beer in bulk is not cheaper than buying 1 can or 1 bottle.

 

[lovezoo]

I suspect if you bought your beer in a returnable keg from a trade supplier it would be much cheaper than cans and bottles. It costs around 70c a litre to get bottled beer here in the supermarket, which is cheap enough for me.

 

[duncan99210]

If you buy beer in the standard kegs used in bars, then it's very cheap. When I was working with a University OTC we sold beer at less then £1 a pint yet still made over 20% profit on the bar. However, buying it in the mini kegs you can pick up in the supermarket you throw away the keg when finished; the keg itself is fairly expensive and that's why it costs more to buy beer by that method rather than cans or bottles. So, if you want cheap beer, either live with the can disposal problem or drink so much that it makes sense to buy commercial kegs from the brewery......

 

[OldBawley]

Do those things have a build in generator ?

 

[fuss]

Do those things have a build in generator ?

Its quite efficient,
In 24hrs it, on average, uses the same as 1 hours power for the fridge.

But the main advantages would be cheaper beer as its bought in bulk and less waste to throw away.

Maybe I should have posted this in the motor boats forum. However I see the main advantages come with longer term use, from users who have time on their hands, wish to cut packaging waste, save money and save electricity.

Thats why I thought it would be interesting to the liveaboard community.