When I was at Synek event, there were a variety of people there. Only one other homebrewer in the crowd that I could find, and he had to drive from a whole state away! (To give you an idea, we have four home brew clubs in town and one of the national qualifying beer competitions is here, so not like there are no other brewers.)
One couple decided to explain to me how they'd gone on a spree of kickstarters, they had even gotten that cooler with the built in radio and stuff. They are 'chardonnay' drinkers and they got this because it looked cool. The guy then asked me about why (this Reinheitsgebot German brewery) didn't have an IPA.
So...that is the kind of people buying this machine. It is NOT for them. There might be a few up for sale in a few months when they realize that they cannot just plug it in and it does not magically fill itself up with beer.
1) There is some assembly. If you have any familiarity with kegging then you got this no sweat. If you are even slightly mechanical the instructions shouldn't be needed.
2) There is a bit of work to get it pouring beer. The bags are good, but you need to hook up hoses and those hoses are really tight in the space, like almost kinked. (Some online have said they did kink.) The bags, when full and pressurized, take some small effort to get into place, you have to fold up corners and press it in to the cooling area.
3) Sanitation is not for the avg users. As a home brewer my first thoughts looking at this as I had the parts out was that I needed to disassemble further and sanitize all those hoses and the tap.
4) They made a change during build, because 'the brewers told us', to flow control perlicks from the standard. I have been brewing for many years and I have NO IDEA how to use this thing, hell taking it apart to clean and put keg lub in was a new interesting experience. (Had to watch a video to figure it out.)
--- Oh, and my flow control appears to be backward, it moves back toward the shank, figured when I pulled it apart I'd figure out how to fix it, but nope.
--- Oh, I had to pull it apart because first hook up it was leaking, dribbiling the whole time. Pulled it apart to keg lube and see if that helped, it did. (But any non-kegging user would be ticked off!)
There are also a couple of build issues overall and one experience that has happened both times now.
1) The machine has a metal look, but wow is most if it plastic. The doors are a bit light. They do the job I guess (no idea how well they are sealing) but you would not want to rough house the opening and closing.
2) The hose onto the shank, as I mentioned before, that should have been secured. No idea how they missed that as I found it on my very first heffeweisen I hooked up.
3) Both times now I have attempted to hook the beer back up, the whole thing has made a pretty large mess. If someone had this in their kitchen it could get down right annoying, but since my SWMBO does not visit my beer cave, I hope she won't notice. Some pics of the messes.
Lastly, there was one mistake I made, but then I could see how others would make it too. When I was hooking the line up to the regulator. Pics of before and after...
4) Each machine only comes with one of those filler caps. That is fine if you only ever want to have one beer, run it out, go find another. But if you are planning ahead, you have to buy more caps yourself.
5) Seems I was misreading the map they have of breweries on the site. You would 'assume', since I cannot find a legend, that all the colored marks on the map would be breweries that fill. They are not. They basically only list all the breweries 'around' your area. The 'grey' icons, yes the GREY icons are the ones that fill. IN ANY DAMN PROGRAMMING WORLD A GREYED OUT BUTTON IS...what? what is it class...INACTIVE, yes, right. So I have two filling points in a major metro area. ((This was the reason I bought the thing, I watched the map get updated so I said what the heck.))
Next test will be conditioning my own beer in these baggies. I have two dry hopping now that will be ready soon. If that doesn't work, then I will have to rethink this.