Sipping suds with the Synek Counter Top Beer Dispenser

The Synek Counter Top Dispenser lets you bring home a doggie bag of your favorite beer and pour it from the temp-controlled, carbonated tap. Click through to see how this magic beer machine works.

The $330 Synek comes with three beer cartridges, a cap allowing you to hook the cartridges into the dispenser and an empty CO2 tank.

Take a cartridge to a participating bar or brewery to get it filled. If they fill it with a Synek fill kit, the beer won't be exposed to oxygen during the pour.

Fill up your CO2 tank and twist it into the regulator during setup.

The beer goes into the left compartment of Synek.

Click the CO2 line onto the bag.

Then click the line that connects the beer bag to the tap and slide the beer into place.

Pull the handle and your beer will pour.

We asked a local brewery to fill up a Synek cartridge and a growler with the same beer so we could do a blind taste test.

With the cups next to each other, I invited my coworkers to take one from each row, without telling them which glass came from Synek and which came from the growler.

On the first days of the test, the beer from the growler and the beer from Synek tasted similar.

The beer from the growler tended to lose flavor after two days.

But Synek only lasted three or four before losing flavor itself.

The Synek Counter Top Beer Dispenser is a great device in theory, but I was hoping the cartridge would keep beer fresher for longer.