The Original Royal Brew Nitro Cold Brew Coffee Maker – Gift for Coffee Lovers – 64 oz Home Keg, Nitrogen Gas System Coffee Dispenser Kit

The keg is top heavy so it starts to become unbalanced as you near the bottom. The last couple of pours also don’t have as much gas. It’s not really a cold brew maker either as it’s only for dispensing. Over all quality is fairly good and it keeps pressure. The spout drips easily so there’s a spout cover included. However, it collects the coffee which kind of splashes all over when you try to take the cover off. That said, putting the cover on requires a bit of wiggling to ensure it’s snug. Condensation builds up on the tap quickly so you really have to jam the cover on so it stays. Then taking it off means you have to be gentle or you splash cold brew around that it had caught from the previous pour.

It’s a novel way to have coffee at home and pretty cheap aside from the initial cost. It would be nice if it had some adapters for CO2 so you could have sparkling water or beer. It seems that there are no CO2 cartridges that are the same style as the N2 and nitrous ones. It’s a single use device that requires quite a bit of fridge room (64oz version).

Now I’m in the big league with Royal Brew Nitro Cold Brew Coffee Maker Home Keg Kit System (G1 Stainless Steel 64 oz). I used to enjoy alone with the NitroPress but now I can share with my buddies a smooth nitro cold brew of my choice back home. Thanks to Royal Brew for a great product!!!

I had an issue with my original order but the customer service is great! The PRO model
Is great, works well, takes some tinkering to get the nitro working but once you do it’s super yummy. I use 4oz of milk in the Keg to help.

Before I go further, I am incredibly happy with my purchase. I am able to make draft coffee and lattes with exactly the same taste and mouthfeel as from cafes. It’s a little hard to fit in my fridge, so make sure you take measurements to find the ideal positioning. The build quality is very good, with solid hunks of heavy, stainless steel and robust gaskets. The whole thing is put together well with only a couple of pieces of plastic.

The instructions are quite poor. They are difficult to parse, badly laid out, contain multiple typos, and are inadequate for making the best coffee. They mention attaching a gasket, something also mentioned in their YouTube videos, but it was not in the package, while another, different gasket came pre-installed. There are steps emphasizing the importance of cutting the hose to the correct length, but I instead received, like, a dozen pre-cut hoses that I just cleaned and used. The process was confusing.

Nowhere is it explained that nitrogen has a huge effect on flavor. I knew this, because I have loved nitro coffee and nitro beer for years, but did not fully appreciate the magnitude of the effect until putting some off-the-shelf cold brew coffee into the keg. Cold brew is already very mellow, and the increased mellowing of the nitrogen makes the coffee taste almost like water. I strongly recommend making your own cold brew and using a slightly diluted concentrate instead of fully diluted coffee. The same goes for if you are making draft lattes, make the drink stronger than you otherwise would when consuming via another method.

The instructions are also, strangely, contradictory with other pieces of documentation from Royal Brew. Some places recommend using a single N2O canister, whereas others say that the dual N2 canisters are ideal. I have tried both and can say, beyond doubt, that the dual N2 canisters produce a significantly better product. If you desire a product that is similar to what you would get from a cafe, you must use N2.

Unfortunately, the process for using dual N2 canisters is one of the areas where the instructions fail. They simply say to repeat two steps for the extra canister but they do not provide the correct time frame in which to repeat these steps. Again, I experimented and can provide some insight. When you inject the first N2 canister, shake the keg and let it sit for a short time. You don’t need to take a full hour, since all you want is for the liquid to absorb enough of the gas such that, when you remove the N2 canister, you don’t have wasted gas blast out. If you attach the second canister shortly after injecting the first, you will lose quite a bit of gas from the first injection. After you have attached the second canister, vigorously shake the keg for a full thirty seconds. I let my keg sit in the fridge for an hour in one case and two hours in another and saw no difference in final product. One hour appears to be enough for the initial gas infusion. If your keg has sat unused for more than a couple of hours, make sure to vigorously shake the keg for thirty seconds before dispensing. The quality of the nitro when these steps are followed is excellent.

Finally, I don’t like the videos and photos of people drinking full beer glasses of beautiful, cascading nitro coffee. This is not a large keg. Maximizing quality demands that you absolutely do not fill the keg past the 75% mark, which means that you can only put 48oz in the 64oz keg, which means that it’s enough for only three of those glasses. If you drink a lot of coffee through the day, or if you have company, you will hit the limits of the 64oz keg very quickly. I hit the limit on my second day with some friends and since preparation takes 90 minutes, it’s not something you can just whip together when you run out. I strongly recommend anyone looking at this product to look at the 128oz version, even though its increased size will make the shaking step during preparation that much more difficult.

All in all, while this is not super-easy, it is also not hard. And importantly, the final product is so good that I don’t care about the process required to get there. I am glad that I chose this over the uKeg because, one, it was cheaper, but also because the external connection for the gas means that I am not beholden to the tiny canisters. I could theoretically attach a larger gas assembly, which is even more attractive if using the 128oz canister which requires four of the N2 gas canisters. That is neither here nor there, though. I am very happy with my purchase after only a few days of ownership.