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KEGGING HELP THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR, HOW TO REBUILD THE KEGS, AND THINGS THAT KEGGING WILL ALOW YOU TO DO TO HELP PROTECT YOUR BEER.
Corny Kegs 12-18-07 Art’s Brewing Supplies Art Frewin
Before I start I want to say cutting off your out dip tube is a big mistake and there is no reason to do it. After drawing a few glasses of beer or wine, you will have cleaned up the bottom around the dip to and it will be clear sailing from then on unless someone moves the keg. THE INFORMATION CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE 28 OR BOTTOM HYPERLINK
1. There are at least 3 or 4 different manufacturers of kegs, at least there use to be. Of those Cornelius and Firestone are the ones see around and the others you will rarely see. Some people say that the Firestone kegs are not as good and should not be bought. Also there are pin lock and ball lock varieties. The ball lock quick connects have a sleeve that needs to be lifted before you can put it on or take it off. Pin lock work like the old car tail light blubs they have 2 and 3 pins coming out of the male quick connect on the keg. You push the female connection on and twist it into the slots to hold it. I used that type when I first started, and right a way, while they both will work, I realized they were not as good. The ball lock is superior in my opinion. Sometimes when I swung the hose around to fill my glass it would disconnect on me. Second the pressure relief is a blow out one, not one you can release yourself like on the ball lock. Also it will not disconnect until you pull the sleeve up. Both can be made by the same company and in some instances you can interchange the male disconnects, but a lot of the time you can not. There are 4 different types of poppets, but on most of the ball lock a Cornelius poppet will seal with them but not always. I believe the Cornelius is a better poppet and so I try them first. They are the most expensive ones, but I feel have the best seats of all of them, although sometimes they will not work and you need a different one.
2. Some people are saying the Cornelius brand is the only ones to buy. That is not true, there are older styles that will work but are more hassle then the newer ones. More parts, that are hard to find, rebuilding them are harder (getting them not to leak is harder also), or are not made anymore. I do not sell that type any more since I found out about the parts anymore. I did sell them in the past. Since I sold a few I wanted to make sure that they could be fixed and remain in service. I still have a few of the pressure reliefs that are not made anymore, but when I run out which will surely happen I want to be able to get them back in service. Those pressure reliefs are expensive also. The all plastic one is one of those pressure reliefs’, I now have a pressure relief that can be substituted for it. The release pressure on it is 60 psi, which should work prefect for beer or wine and add a little safety factor into it. The all metal one, until the post that holds the o-ring seal in place, is corroded way we can fix, and after that it could be drilled to fit the new pressure relief I put together. The other thing is a plastic CO2 side dip tube that can no longer be gotten. Some of those dip tubes were made in stainless, so that does not cause a problem. Some people did not want the plastic although it never caused me any problems in my kegs (over 15 years of using them). So I solved that problem, by taking a dip tube and cutting it off so it is only 1/4” long, and then you can put the o-ring on it and seal it up with all stainless and no leaks. The plastic ones start at the same diameter and are then reduced to a smaller one so a straight sided tube will not fit unless you cut it off. There are some kegs as I said earlier are some to stay away from if you can. The kegs with race track lids will be more problems. The plastic lid ones you could do without also although I still am using some I got 15 years ago and expect they will last a lot longer. Another bad style is an older style keg and it has a metal handle (there are some new ones with metal handles that will not be this way and are perfectly alright to use if you have the money. The older ones the male quick connect on the keg is not welded on it screws together with a nut inside the keg and they can be harder to seal, there are more parts to them, and take longer to work on.
3. Of coarse we guaranty that the kegs we sell if you buy all new seals, poppets, and pressure relief will seal, although I have a chance to fix them first. If I can not make it seal you get your new parts and another keg. If the pressure relief is good and it is leaking somewhere else you do not have to but a pressure relief. We will take care of the leaks if you got them. We do not cover the shipping costs back and forth, but after hearing what is wrong you might only need to ship a small piece of it. Some lid seats can be bent not allowing the lid to seal, do not use pliers to try and bend it, it can leave marks causing it not to seal also. I use a plate bender, which was copied from a medical tool that they use to bend steel implants so they fit better, it does not leave gouges or marks on the metal such as pliers do. With this tool I have fixed most of the bent seats, but some I just could not fix. If the lid seals loosely a lot of the time the wire post on the lid just need to be bent down a little so the lid pulls the o-ring up tighter. If you work on the kegs trying to fix them, that voids the warranty. I would check that out before I bent the seal to try and stop the leak. I have seen people talking on forums that say buy the o-rings that are bigger and softer and mention a few shops, yes way back in the late 80s there was a softer bigger o-ring and a smaller harder one, I have not seen the hard smaller o-rings from the place I buy them for 15 years. I would bet 99.9% of the shops only sell the big ones, because mostly are buying from the same place I do. I do have some of those left as well as square lid rings that were meant for the race track lids, if somebody wants one for some reason I can not think of. There is another keg I will not sell because it is an older more hassle type. I have some if someone wants some. Do not buy the plastic lid ones either, they will probably crack eventually, although I have used some for almost 20 years. I usually end up with most of the bad kind of kegs (1of the disadvantages of selling kegs I guess) I do sell those once in a while for a discount after letting who ever is buying them know what is happening with them..
4. When buying them make sure the male disconnects are not bent very much at the lip where the outer gasket goes that seals leaks between the male and female quick connect. I use them all the time, but trying to bend it up they usually break off a piece. I dermal it until the broken part is smooth and put the o-ring on and never had a problem. The kegs everyone is selling (used ones), have not been in use for 20 years, that’s when they started bag in the box. Finally after 15 years they decided to sell them and the amount of keggers increased dramatically. I believe I was the first major seller of them because when I put my add in Zymurgy (1987) I was the only one with an add in there, and sold them all over the US including Alaska and Canada to shops and individuals. Pepsi would not sell them to me after that for another 15 years. The reason Pepsi sold them to me back then was they had just bought the 7-UP Co., what I bought was 7-ups inventory. They would not sell them after that saying they were afraid of liability. 15 years later they started selling most of their kegs, and that is how everyone got and started selling them.
5. The looks of the keg will have small dents and scratches, but the inside once cleaned are beautiful, do not worry, about the outside looks, unless you’re a perfectionist and if that is true buy new ones.
6. If you want to check your pressure relief, put 30 psi of air or CO2 in it and put soapy water on the pressure relief and watch for bubbles. When checking to make sure the rest is not leaking only put 10 or less psi in it and check for bubbles. The higher the pressure the more it will seat the o-rings. Since you deliver your beer at 5 to 10 psi, setting it higher might leave you with a leak at a bad time. After not finding a leak at 10 psi, I will let the keg sit for a few weeks to make sure I did not miss a small leak, which has happened many times.
7. Elbow grease, manually clean the kegs as well as you can with scrubbies, and after that then a caustic cleaning. Put your new parts in and pressure check your kegs. Rinse well to remove the soap and sterilize. I fill the keg with iodine, then sink the lid with the pressure relief open at the top of the keg dangling from the opening for 3 to 5 minutes. Then close the pressure relief, and then close the lid and with an out to out jumper push it into the next keg ready to be sterilized with you CO2 (so it goes up the pick-up tube and down the other pick-up tube). At the end of emptying the keg, roll the bottom of the keg around in circles slowly to make sure there is no standing sterilent and pull off the out to out from the stylized keg. Allow it to come to 10 to 12 psi and if it is still holding pressure when you are ready to use it all you have to do is fill it because it is sanitized and purge, so no aeration.
8. When looking for bubbles small leaks around the lid can be so tiny that you can not see the bubbles just white from them.
9. To carbonate I usually am doing 10 to 20 kegs at a time, so I shoot the keg to 30 psi and the next night I shoot it back to 30 psi. 3 or 4 days of that and I take it to where I use to store my bottles. I like my kegs aged at least 1 year or more before drinking. After filling the kegs and before I force carbonate, with the lid on and pressure relief open I shoot CO2 into the for 30 seconds shut the relief valve let it sit for an hour and do the same thing 4 or 5 times just to try and remove as much of the oxygen as possible.
10. I do not use lubricant on my gaskets and get a lot of use from my o-rings, if the quick connects go on hard, I wet the CO2 quick connect with water or the liquid one before putting them on and that is all I have needed to do and I do not have to clean off all that lubricant after it is empty. You need to keep the tops covered so dust and other things will not fall between the lid and the keg, and when you open it something could fall in from there which is no good. I make a bath cap type of thing by rapping the keg with stretch rap and after a couple of times 12” down start angling the wrap up until it is only about 3” from the top. I then fold the top over and at the bottom start rolling the stretch rap up until I get to where the top is folded over and stick it in as I roll. That leaves me with a leak proof no dirt top for when I need it.
11. Wine has worked wonderful for me in the kegs, from the racking to clear, down to using it to deliver a pitcher or a glass at a time. I use CO2 and have never noticed an acidity you are supposed to get from it and it is recommended it be done with nitrogen. I use low pressure and get a pink head, but no carbonation. I only put it into the keg after fermentation is complete. Since the air hardly touches my wine I only sulfite it at the start. I have gotten better wine and a lot less work.
12. When buying kegs look at the pressure relief valves. That will tell you, you have the right type of keg. The pressure reliefs you want on the keg lid have two types, and they are interchangeable. The fist one is called a pull ring. It looks like this, a ring like a key ring you can pull up to open the pressure relief. Under it is a plastic cylinder, with a couple of notches on top for the ring to settle into. Once pulled up, you can turn the ring 90 degrees and that will lock it open, because it will not be in the notches anymore. The second one has a thin plastic bottom that plastic toggle type of thing you can flip up to keep it open. All the pressure relief valves unscrew counter clockwise. When you install them be careful not to strip the thread on the plastic part of the pressure relief valve.
13. Leaky kegs. The keg can leak somewhere on the body of the keg, I have only seen it a couple of times. My first time it was brought back and had a pin hole leak in the side. The inside had a lot of rust in it and even though he told me he did not use chlorine I think he did. I have had a couple leak other places and I could not tell you why but they had small holes. The lid can leak anywhere around it, and is the hardest problem to fix because of the number of reasons why it could leak there. Continued on the next page 28
the rods that pull the lid up to seal it can be bent out a little, and by clamping the wire in a vise very carefully, you can take a big pair of pliers and just above on the 90 degree part from the bottom bend the wires down a bit. That will pull the lid up some to a lot depending on how far they were bent. Could be a bad o-ring also, they flatten out with use, or could have been damaged. I have seen bad lids and bad welds on the lid, but they are pretty sturdy and hard to bend (except for the bale). The seat for the o-ring on the keg can be bent and I have seen a lot of those. Bending the lid seat is a dangerous job, it can wreck a keg very easily, I have wreck probably over 100 kegs. I have also fixed a few 100. The pressure relief, if it is leaking take it out and make sure there is nothing stuck down in there where the valve seats. Check where the pressure relief is welded, I have had a few leak there (watch where the bubbles are coming from, the holes or around the base of the valve. Some bad pressure relief valves I could not see why it should leak, but it did and replacing it fixed it. I have fixed them but it takes time and equipment. Luckily they last a long time. Male quick connect on top of the keg. All threads are regular right hand threads so to remove them they need to be twisted counter clockwise. Under the quick connect there is a dip tube and a, the 0-ring seals the bottom of the connect to the keg and if leaking will blow bubbles out around the bottom of the quick connect and the keg. The o-ring at the top of the quick connect will seal so there are no leaks liquid or gas side between the female and male keg quick connects. The poppet is the little spring loaded item in the middle of the male quick connect on the keg. If it is leaking you will see bubbles around where the poppet and the quick connect meet. They can be slow and so you need to watch them carefully to make sure no bubbles are happening there. Close to the edge of the quick connect in the center can have been hit and bend the metal so there is an upset on the inside where the seal is , or a bill up of rubber or something else that will allow it to happen, or it could be a faulty poppet that needs replacing. If there is an upset from the metal a lot of times you can use a rotary tool to grind off enough that it will seat, all though some times it has not worked. And I have seen quick connects that have holes in them, so you need another male quick connect (I have only seen it twice).
14. Now I know the system is a lot of money, but the Pepsi kegs are starting to become scarce, and of course just like the 3 gallon kegs that are hard to find, when you do the price will reflect that. If you can not afford the system right now, what I would do is pick up a keg once in a while at $30 it is not out of reach for even the poor people like me. Billed up a stock pile and then when you can afford it you will have kegs at a reasonable price. I believe 10 is not enough, but each person has to make the decision as to how many they will want and if you make wine you will need some for it. I would want over 24 but I do bulk brewing and I need over 100 of them for myself. Lets say you buy to many after you get started and realize you have bought to many. There will be enough people looking for those kegs the selling price will be at least $65 and probably more so you will make money off of them when you get ride of them if you try. You do not have a lot to lose.
15. if you start kegging your beer will be better, it will store longer, you will save around 4 hours work each time you brew, once you have the equipment it is cheaper then bottling (just from the cost of the caps and corn sugar), you can take sediment free beer with you if you want in bottles, and you can filter your wine or beer to help fix problems 0r make sure you will not stir up the sediment when the keg is moved. You can bottle from kegs, straight from the keg, or use counter pressure bottle fillers and other special fillers. Some allow you to put sediment free beer in a plastic soda bottle, but that one can also be made very simply and easy. You just take the soda bottle cap and drill the right size hole for a tire stem then buy the stem ,pull it threw and make a air chuck connection for your CO2 line and you are in business without buying the expensive commercial one.
16. I am sure I have left something out, but at least this will give beginners and advanced keggers a little information that might help them.
Best of luck, Art Frewin Art’s Brewing Supplies artsbrew@qwest,net 1-801-533-8029
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