Party Pig Review  See Kassik's Kenai Brew Stop in AK on our Craftbrewer List 
" . girls think it's cute and the guys don't grumble too much when fresh beer comes out.  This is a great way to save some bacon. And, heads up: you can put lipstick on a pig , but it's still bull of beer." 

By James ‘Dr. Fermento’ Roberts   Anchorage Press 
      Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 6:56 PM AKST

Beer is my friend and I like to take it with me. I don’t always like to drink beer in a bar. I don’t always like to drink beer at home. Sometimes I like to bring beer with me to a friend’s house or out into the wilderness where I work and play. That’s why beer comes in cans, bottles and kegs. Each affords me a different level of convenience.

Beer portability is a key issue for small breweries because many don’t have the expensive equipment it takes to containerize their goods in bottles or cans and rely instead on sales of 15.5-gallon half-barrels or the increasingly popular one-sixth barrel “Corney Kegs” to bars and restaurants. But most small breweries are also licensed for limited on-premise sale of smaller units of beer directly to the consumer. The most common container is the half-gallon glass “growler.”

The problem with these small containers is that they’re not filled within a closed system—meaning that usually, a flexible tube is simply attached to a beer spigot at the brewery and the containers are filled from the bottom up, displacing the air as the liquid rises to the top. Not all of the air is evacuated from the bottle, and air is a big enemy to beer. The result is a very short shelf life—typically two or perhaps three days. After that, the beer becomes flat and listless. People that use growler service really have to plan their drinking.

Once, I was down on the Peninsula and ducked into Kassik’s Kenai Brew Stop. I was fixing to hit a company party then head down to the beach to help some friends go set net fishing. I brought an empty one-sixth barrel Corney Keg, a bottle of carbon dioxide and a tapping system so I could enjoy brewery fresh beer at each of my stops. All told, I was packing over $250 of equipment that I didn’t want to lose, and setting up and breaking down the approximately 65 pounds of equipment didn’t meet the “convenience” criteria very well. But being a veteran partier, and having a reputation to live up to, I was used to this kind of inconvenience to please my friends, and I always gained one or two when I showed up armed with my own small draft system. Brewer/owner Frank Kassik looked at my gig and said “Why don’t you just take a pig to the party?”

I laughed, wondering what he meant, until he reached under the counter and handily produced a small, bovine-looking hard plastic container complete with a push-button snout and square-ish, stubby legs that allowed it to stand upright. Inside the belly of the beast was 2.25 gallons of just what I was looking for: brewery fresh beer. [ that's out Party Pig] I passed. For one thing, due to my own boastful self-righteousness, the thing didn’t look sophisticated enough for me and I thought that my gleaming, high-tech stainless steel apparatus might bait more oglers.

A year or two went by, and one day Kassik showed up in Anchorage and he just flat handed me my own pet (sans leash). “Run it through the paces,” he challenged me. “Don’t be kind or gentle,” he baited. “Just tell me what you think. No one turns down free beer and I wasn’t going to be the first, especially since the little oinker was filled with one of my favorite beers, Kassik’s Moose Point Porter. I’m sure I looked a little sheepish when I turned it over, held it up and twisted it around looking for some sort of pump or place to plug in gas to push the beer out of the refillable container. Kassik laughed. “Just push the nose,” he said. “It’s fully pressurized, self contained, and the internal bladder will naturally collapse as you use up the beer.” My right eyebrow raised. “Uh, how long will it last?” I asked half-suspiciously. About as long as any other industry keg, he said.

I warmed up to the little gem as I placed in on my truck seat next to me, and by the time I got home, I was thinking of names for my sudsy little pet.

I don’t know if Kassik really knew what my “paces” were when he challenged me, but over the next three weeks, Porter and I took wheeler rides together, he bounced around in the back of my truck with a bunch of firewood and he even took a tumble down a hill and stumbled off the picnic table once or twice. Each time, my little piggy rebounded right back eager to disgorge more delicious beer with the tweak of his nose. The only thing that seasoned growler guzzlers and Corney connoisseurs will notice is that due to the small diameter of the Party Pig’s dispenser (about an eighth of an inch) the beer comes out slower than normal. Still, I was sold. The pig owned me.

Given this newfound friendship, I’m indeed surprised that more of our small local breweries don’t implement this level of convenience for their customers. At least at Kassik’s you can rent a pig for a $45 deposit or buy it outright for $35. It costs about $45 for standard beers (including the unit’s disassembly and installation of a new liner) and a bit more for the specialty beers. According to Kassik, many of his customers own a number of them. Some have a whole sty. Porter needs a pal, so I’ll be looking for a mate soon. First though, I think I’ll buy him his own Party Pig Parka, a fabric-covered neoprene vest designed to keep his innards at just the right temperature for up to four hours. The girls think it’s cute and the guys don’t grumble too much when fresh beer comes out. This is a great way to save some bacon. And, heads up: you can put lipstick on pig, but it’s still full of beer.
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