Any Draft Beer, on Tap, at Home

Our weekly series looks at new crowdfunding projects to look for products that are interesting, innovative, or just plain cool. Sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter are full of amazing ideas, and considering the success of products like the Pebble smartwatch and the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, it's also where the next big thing could well come from.

The Synek Kickstarter falls firmly in the weird but cool category, and it's very unlikely that this product is going to change the world, but if you're interested in beer, and particularly if you're interested in the homebrew movement, then you're probably going to get pretty excited by the Synek.

So what exactly is a Synek? You're probably familiar with the idea of a "growler" - a glass jug that's used to store and transport beer and preserve some freshness. But they're pretty heavy, breakable, and of course, each time you open the bottle to pour a drink, the beer gets flat, so you've got a day or so to drink your beer. Synek uses a plastic pouch, which is filled with a simple tube system from your tap. It can hold up to one gallon of beer (3.7 litres), and is airtight and opaque so the beer stays fresh.

You can fill the pouch using your own brew, or from the tap at your neighbourhood bar. To drink the beer, you just put the pouch in the Synek, and pull the beer from the tap. The pouch remains protected from air when it's inside the Synek so your beer remains fresh and should taste exactly the way it is meant to, for a whole month, according to the Kickstarter page. You can even, they say, swap out one beer for another and store the pouch in your fridge.

Today, craft brewing is starting to gain a little bit of momentum in India, and if you're one of the people who's interested in this then the Synek sounds like a great product. The Kickstarter will set you back by $299 (around Rs. 18,000) for the full Synek setup, which sounds a little expensive, until you consider that this is essentially the beer equivalent of a Nescafe Dolce Gusto machine - the type where you put in a premixed capsule to get your coffee. And those cost around as much here too.

The Synek Kickstarter will be accepting funding until July 24. To learn more, take a look at its video below:

To see our other picks from crowdfunded projects, click here.