Gadgetory

we're at the Haymarket whiskey bar in downtown Louisville Kentucky with the physics countertop draft machine this is a hundred and seventy dollar machine that's supposed to take your bottle of beer and make it taste like it came from the draft it's also nicely designed and really easy to use you just put your bottle into the machine seal the lid and pull the handle forward and it'll pour your beer nice and gently push the handle back and it'll add that foamy head oddly enough it's supposed to do this by using sound apparently the frequency of the machine causes vibrations in the carbonation to give your beer that nice draft like head I think it sounded like infomercial mumbo-jumbo but we've been testing this comparing physics beers to the same beers from the bottle and it really does make a difference it gives your beer a nice head every single time and it actually does smooth out the flavor now we didn't find that to be consistently a good thing like on some hoppy beers and on bitter Porter's it actually ended up smoothing over part of that bitterness which is part of the character of the beer so it definitely makes a difference but we really wanted to see how it stacks up against actual draft beer so we asked Matt Landon owner of the Haymarket whiskey bar to do a blind taste test comparing a single beer and draft form bottle the form and from the physics side by side by side to see if he could tell them apart and to see which one he preferred here's what he had to say okay beer number three was out of the bottle beer number two was draught and beer number one was through the gizmo beer number one had the most calm carbonation it tasted the most draft like it tasted more draft like than even the draft beer that it was actually draft it had more of a head did I have him wrong did I have them reversed was one the draft into the gizmo yeah bummer I did the same taste test and I found that just like with the beers in the office it does make the beer taste different if not necessarily better all right so be number one you're number two three really close I'm gonna go three is the bottle I'm gonna go two is the draft I'm gonna go one is physics so they so they've equalized a little bit but it's good that they've equalized because if the effect is only temporary then it's not as good and you can taste the difference between the draft and between physics and between the bottle the the draft is still the best one because the hops come out the most you do lose some of that with the physics on this beer but it does taste more carbonated than the bottled version so it's a step in the right direction it's doing what it's supposed to do I mean it is cool it definitely made the beer tastes more like fresh beer on draft but I think if you're really into beer at home you're looking to put a draft system in not by a battery-operated gizmo that you feed it beer one at a time so all in all it's a cool machine it's well designed it's easy to use and if you're really passionate about beer and really value the creamy and the sweet aspects it might be worth the money if you value more the bitter aspects of your beer this machine might actually take something away from your drinking experience I want to say thanks again to the guys at Haymarket whisky bar for letting us use their space and be willing participants in our test for more be sure to check out my full review on cnet.com for CNET with the physics countertop draft system i'm andrew Gebhardt