A friend of mine here in Yakima swears by commercial 1/6 barrel Sankey kegs. He says they are easy to clean and don’t have the sealing problems that corny kegs do. And they are roughly the same cost. So I’m curious. I’d love to simplify the kegging process as well as get rid of the ‘is it going to stay sealed’ issues.
Does anyone agree with my friend? If so, what is the best way to get the kegs clean, purged with CO2 and refilled?
How does he clean them? Can you share?
I use 1/6 bbl kegs all the time. If you have recircing cleaner system they are easy to clean. But I can’t imagine that being practical for a homebrewer. I also never really had problems getting corny kegs lid to seal. And taking the spears out of a sanke keg is a real PITA.
As I recall he has adapted a sankey keg coupler to flush via the spear. No spear removal.
I toured a nano brewery in Peoria a year or so ago. They rigged a PVC CIP stand which they kept in a deep sink and inverted the kegs over that. This did require removal of the spear.
I have had issues with losing a seal on a corny keg- more than twice, but less than 5 times I’d say. That does not count all the times (countless it seems) where I do the Starsan spray/bubbling test and cussed the result, and had to remove and reseat posts or whatever. The bottom line is that there are 6(!) places on a corny keg for a seal to go bad - only one on a sankey keg.
We build our first keg cleaner, they are fairly simple to make. You can also get adapters that can fit both sanke and ball lock/pin lock QDCs.
Sankey kegs are great.
They still can leak thru the seal but this will happen most likely if there is a dirt in the seal. Another wash cycle usually fixes it.
I have a friend that used corny keg and CO2 to clean them. He puts cleaner to corny keg and pushes it thru inverted keg thru beer out port and drains it thru gas in port.
I am still using home rigged keg washer. It is using a pump to circulate cleaner and sanitizer.
Do you remove the spear, or if you don’t, what do you have rigged to make it work?
There is absolutely no reason to remove the spear except for periodic inspection. It’s a simple recirculation cleaning procedure. However, I seriously think it would be a hell of a lot easier just cleaning cornies than building a keg cleaner. If you are required to remove the spear every time you will quickly regret this idea.
Love the manifold/valve setup! I may have to have my pipefitter son in law weld one up out of stainless!
I did it with coper. It was fast and cheap. You still needs to have vessel to hold a cleaner and pump.
It looks quite overkill for homebrewing. Unless you have a homebrew club and they operate one for everybody.
I live for overkill
Go for it.
Case in $@%€ point! Yesterday I finished cold-conditioning a pale ale, so I took it out of the freezer (where it was holding pressure perfectly) and moved it to the kegerator to join a Munich Helles (which was also holding pressure perfectly).
I returned last night with my son-in-law and went to pull a beer. Nothing. The CO2 tank was empty! The gas post on the Helles had begun leaking, and now both beers are flat. I had only checked the new connections. Can I swear on this forum?
I need to work out a good cleaning system for 1/6 bbl sankey kegs and begin getting rid of these corney kegs!
You can on the Brewing Network forum. Come on over!
That sucks, Steve. I feel your pain. I’ve lost a couple kegs out the out post, drained overnight on the f-ing floor (I like to curse at those moments, too ;)). And I’ve had CO2 tanks go empty out the gas post. My procedure now is to change all o-rings once a year, use keg lube every time, and leak check the prv, lid, gas and liquid posts with starsan on every keg. Matter of fact, I have a cream ale on tap now that had a loose gas post and had I not leak checked it, it would’ve gone flat and the tank empty. Since I started doing this on all my kegs I haven’t had a repeat. Been years.
You won’t have many leaking issues with sixtels, though it can still happen occasionally. But you can still have leaky co2 connections.