Head brewer Tom Davis offers a simple solution to give beer engine owners a much wider choice when buying draught beer for home drinking. These tips will allow you to widen your beer selection to include a lot more breweries.
Beer engines have grown in popularity. We now get so many queries about how to hook up a polypin, Tom photographed the parts to show how simple this attachment solution can be.
Supplies needed
- A length of 3/8″ or 10mm internal diameter food-safe hose. It should slide nicely on to the tap on the polypin and also on to the outlet on the beer engine.
- One or two jubilee clips to fit the diameter of the hose.
As you see in this first picture, the end on an Exmoor Ales polypin tap is fairly straight, allowing a hose to slip on.
The second picture is the hose attached to the polypin tap. The beer hose has a 10mm internal diameter, you can add a jubilee clip if you like, but we’ve found the fit snug enough to not need one.
Valve from an Exmoor Ales Polypin 
Valve with tubing attached
Then take the other end of the hose and attach it in the same way to the beer engine outlet, we’ve added a jubilee clip to this end to keep it secure.
Top tip for an easier hose fit
Get a mug of freshly boiled water and dip the end of the hose in for 30 seconds or so and the hose will soften and be easier to attach. Once it cools, the fit will tighten and be more secure.
What about VITOP connectors?
IVITOP style connectors do not work on traditional polypin taps like ours, they are designed to work on the Bag-In-Box style containers which other breweries use.
However, if you remove the VITOP connector from your beer hose, your hose should then be able to slide on to the polypin tap like we’ve shown above. You won’t need an additional hose or to change your existing setup.
If you don’t want to alter your current setup, we recommend having a separate 10mm hose, attaching it the way we’ve shown.
Note
We can’t guarantee success with your beer engine or the draught container you buy, but this process has worked well in all of our trials.
As always with drinks service, you should ensure you are using food-safe hoses, and that everything, including the beer engine itself, has been cleaned and rinsed thoroughly before use.
It is wise to remember to turn the tap on the polypin off at the end of your session, to eliminate the risk of leaks when unsupervised.