Very nice idea: a beer engine at a relatively affordable price and easy to use.
Useful accessories: The printer has four "sucker feet" to immobilize and a small movable table is raised before the unit to collect the drops of beer.
Impeccable design. I read that it had been designed by Marc Newson, Australian designer now at Apple. Fits very well in a kitchen, as long as you have a little depth or a good working plan (see picture).
The site is also very professional and very slick, a little like a large coffee brand ...
The system refills or "Torps" is simple, a single use connector is located in the cap of each Torp, connects thereto and the assembly can be inserted in the manner of a torpedo in the lock the shooter "Sub".
The capacity of 2L cartridge is low when you have a lot of guests, making it necessary to change often. As Torps can be stored in the door of a refrigerator, with a little preparation it is possible to always have beer almost fresh. 2L are sufficient because the beer is preserved for 15 days once inserted into the Sub.
2) Time to bad:
Drinking cold beer therefore requires preparation. We must turn the Sub 1 hour in advance and have a Torp retained for at least 6 hours in refrigerator. Once inserted it yet it takes good 1 hour until the light turns green. In short it can be very long and you should load its Sub yesterday.
It should also allow the turn when a Sub Torp is inserted to keep the pressure and beer, which causes the energy consumption.
Few beers are available at the moment (all belonging to the Heineken Group, which explains why there never find some brands). I've put a photo of the varieties I tested, it lacks the Pelforth.
Many are sold in the mall near my home, at a slightly cheaper price than on the site: Heineken (about 8), Pelforth (the cheapest to 6.8), Affligem (8.5) and Despe ( 9).
The other beer brands are original in France but few and moreover available only on order at: Tiger, Singaporean beer widespread in Southeast Asia, Wieckse, fruity white beer and Dutch Baffo d'Oro, beer Italian.
Finally I had two mishaps:
The first: as a member of the club of Amazon testers I had a code to get 4 Torps free to test the machine (nice offer for that matter). I quickly ordered on the website but had to send an email after 15 days as I had no news despite the word "sent" on the site. I finally received the order after this exchange.
To test their reactivity "in real conditions" I had a real command "paid" on the site, this time received in 48 hours.
The second mishap was the most painful: the pump did not work anymore after 15 days. She began to malfunction mid-Torp up on some no longer work at all.
It took me a long time to solve this problem: three emails to say the same thing and wait 5 days between each answer, until the service calls me. The pump was defused: in this case must be placed between Torp and SAS an A4 sheet of paper folded in 4 and close to create an additional layer and wait 45 seconds for the pump reboots. Apparently it happens when you leave a Torp before it is finished, even if I do not remember doing that.
Nothing so it works again.
And other people have had failures, cf. Other comments and responses to it.
In short, the original idea is very nice despite some problems intrinsic to development, but not insurmountable. However many failures have been reported and the service is not up to par.