Mon Jul 12, 2010 3:24 am
Though I had never brewed one when I saw a genuine Guiness stout faucet in a bar store I bought it and used it for other types of beers. It is forward sealing (if by that you mean that the pressure on the beer pushes the valve into the seat). Years later when I started brewing stout I was (to my intense pleasure and disbelief) able to find the sparkler plate and flow straightener which I had set aside years ago. These faucets are hard to find now but if you want a stout faucet, they are hard to beat in terms of the classic look and performance.
Short of what Guiness makes the best faucets I know of are the Automatic Bar Controls, Inc. faucets sold under the brand name Wunderbar. They are forward sealing and just great faucets IMO. They have lager and "ale" designs which are, I believe, the same except that the latter have the sparkler plate and flow straightener which can, as with the Guiness faucet, be removed by unscrewing the nozzle in which case they would be (AFAIK) identical to the lager version. I don't have any of the ale configuration ones (because I don't do ale much and when I do dispense it through an engine) but I have four of the lager ones and just love them.
[EDIT: corrected name of manufacturer]
