15 replies to this topic

[toonces]

a friend of a friend wants me to make him some beer. and put it into his kegs. he's got a couple of cornies that the manway has been sanitary welded and then converted to a sanke tap. he also loaned me a spare tap, so i can figure out what kind of tap to get.i'm wanting to buy a couple of sanke taps anyway, but i'm trying to figure out which one to buy. i won't be able to post picts of the spare tap until friday or saturday. are all sanke taps the same? i didn't think so. but, i can't find anything online that gives me explicit enough descriptions to determine what he has/what i need. i have several ball-lock cornies with a co2 system, btw.then, once i have the new taps, how do i rinse/sanitize his kegs?then, once i have clean, sanitized kegs, what is the procedure to get the beer from my ball-lock cornie, to his sanke cornie. assuming, i have all of the correct equipment.

[Slainte]

Unless you want your buddy drinking infected beer, you should not use sanke kegs for homebrew unless you have access to a commercial keg cleaner.

[Slainte]

Also, it would probably be much much easier to configure his setup to accept corny kegs.https://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/kegging/dispensing-hardware/shanks/tail-piece-1-4-mfl.htmlIf you put this on his sanke taps, it can accept a swivel nut just like the ones that screw onto the corny quick disconnects.

[djinkc]

I'm fairly certain Swagman went to all Sankes - might want to PM him.

[toonces]

Unless you want your buddy drinking infected beer, you should not use sanke kegs for homebrew unless you have access to a commercial keg cleaner.

would you elaborate on that? why could i not, using the appropriate hardware, transfer cleaning/sanitizing solution from one of my cornies to his? why could i not, using the same hardware, transfer beer to one of my cornies to his?

[gnef]

I think if you were willing to use caustic and then peracetic acid, you would have no problem using sanke kegs. That would be by far the best way to use them.The main reason why I don't move to sanke kegs is due to the weight when full, that I like to be able to get my hand in and clean, and be able to see the inside of the keg.

[Kremer]

This setup I rigged works really well, just use ball lock connectors.

[Slainte]

Not really. You can build a home keg cleaner using a longer spray wand which will work just fine.

And spray what? Hot water? Too bad water won't do a good job cleaning.I guess if you were able to hook up a powerful pump and run PBW through it that might work well. But without the proper tools, you're still just guessing at the cleanliness of your keg. And with removing the spear and soaking in PBW, that is not enough in most cases to do a good job of cleaning. It's far easier to just use corny kegs and configure the friend's kegerator to hook up to them.Using sanke kegs for homebrew kegging (or fermenting) is far more trouble than it's worth. You don't gain any benefit in using sanke kegs over corny kegs to justify the extra effort need to use them.

[Thirsty]

This setup I rigged works really well, just use ball lock connectors.

That is slick Kremer, what do you use for couplings to attach the posts? I am assuming it is leakproof or you wouldnt bother, so they must be pretty tight.

[Kremer]

That is slick Kremer, what do you use for couplings to attach the posts? I am assuming it is leakproof or you wouldnt bother, so they must be pretty tight.

I actually used a hole saw and cut the posts out of a keg I got with a dent in the lid area that I couldn't fix enough to seal right. I sanded/ground the post piece so it would fit through the inside of the beer nut, then put the dip tube gasket and poppet in and cranked the ball lock post on top. The shoulder of the beer nut is basically sandwiched in the middle of the normal assembly of the keg post pieces. It was some work cutting and grinding the pieces but it was worth it, and cheaper than buying the adapter pieces, and it's a much more compact assembly.If you pull the plastic check valve parts out of the sankey coupler you can move liquid and gas any direction you want through the keg to clean it.

[toonces]

I actually used a hole saw and cut the posts out of a keg I got with a dent in the lid area that I couldn't fix enough to seal right. I sanded/ground the post piece so it would fit through the inside of the beer nut, then put the dip tube gasket and poppet in and cranked the ball lock post on top. The shoulder of the beer nut is basically sandwiched in the middle of the normal assembly of the keg post pieces. It was some work cutting and grinding the pieces but it was worth it, and cheaper than buying the adapter pieces, and it's a much more compact assembly.If you pull the plastic check valve parts out of the sankey coupler you can move liquid and gas any direction you want through the keg to clean it.

that's hot. i'm going to try that, or a variation thereof. thanks for the idea, kremer.

[Thirsty]

I really like the compactness of that. My current setup is an inline QD for both the gas and liquid line for one of my faucets. I have a ball lock QD at each end to run a corny, but if I want a sanke, I can snap off both lines and snap them onto a sanke coupler that has the male ends of the inline QDs waiting. I honestly havent hooked up a sanke in a couple of years and have since used the QDs for other co2 accessories, but I can always just clamp them back on if the situation comes up.

[Thirsty]

Turns out I did leave one of the QDs on, I only stole the liquid side, but the gas is still clamped on, so this is what I use:

[toonces]

see? this is what i love about the blueboard. a bunch of good ideas in a short period of time.