Kegs! Oh how sweet it is

Well so I have ventured into kegging...

5 gallon keg

I found some cheap kegs on craigslist or at least a certain craigslist sleuth I know found them for me. I picked up two pin-lock kegs for 60 bucks. The difference between the pin-lock and ball-lock or Corny kegs was the posts. As you can see the picture I posted you can see some little pins on the side and they will hold the accessories on with a simple push-and-twist.  The ball lock posts act like airhose fittings and snap on easier. The reason the two kegs have different posts is because Coke and Pepsi didn't want their kegs to be able to interact with each other. I understand why but hell, it's stupid. A keg is a keg and these pin locks will work just fine for me.


Anyways, I went to Main Street to pick up my keg set up and with it I got all the hoses, the connectors, another 5 gallon keg, a Picnic-style tap, a 5lb CO2 cylinder, regulator, and for a few extra bucks a gas manifold that will let me gasify two kegs with out having to daisy-chain the kegs together. How cool is that! It is identical to the picture below.

I am quite excited for this. Eventually I will add onto it for a 4 keg gasifier or manifold. These things aren't cheap but for now I can move back and forth between kegs. I can also use the kegs to force carbonate my beer and then see about moving to growlers for people or maybe bottling? We shall see how it turns out. All in all the investment into kegging was not as cheap as I thought it would be. The kegs were 30 bucks apiece and the manifold was 33 bucks. There are some other ones out there but they cost about 40 bucks apiece and I will eventually purchase one or build one. We shall see. The CO2 tank will only cost 12 bucks for a trade in. How awesome is that! I am pretty stoked.

Th only problem I will have with kegging is that I do not have a way to keep my kegs cool yet. I am not made of money for beer making but we shall see where this leads me. So those of you who come over for a beer and it comes from the keg, no bitching that it isn't cold. You will get either the finger or a 'bugger off.'

Well UPDATE: When I ventured into the kegs I figured that I would be able to have carbonated beer at a warmer temperature. Oh how I was wrong. It turns out that when you force carbonate the carbonation is not the same as when you use corn sugar to carbonate in bottles. SO to be able to kep the carbonation I am going to have to figure out a way to keep my damn kegs cool. I am debating if it would be cost effective to construct a Jockey Box into which my kegs can go anywhere with cold beer. PoorHouse Jockey Box  I figure I could make an even more elaborate one but I figure Ill go cheap for a while maybe even see if I could make a double jockey box with a small ice chest.