I’m pondering getting into kegging and wonder which type of keg to get.
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Inherently, I’d say neither is necessarily better. The most expedient thing to do is to get the kind most of the people you know have. That way things work out better for parties. The one practical consideration is that pin lock are shorter and have a larger circumference than ball lock.
I have both and use them in different spaces. Like Denny says, the pin locks are a little shorter and they fit better in certain places. I prefer pin locks because they are impossible to mix up the posts like ball locks, and easy to be sure they are on all the way. Ball lock fittings are not always easy to put on and take off.
Most homebrew devices are made for ball locks - carbonator caps, etc., but it doesn’t hurt to have both kinds.
Ball-lock is the de facto standard.
This is true. There are pin-to-ball conversion kits, not the other way around. All newly manufactured tanks (for various applications) I’m aware of are ball lock, and so parts are very easy to find.
I think either is fine but depending on your application one may be preferable over the other.
For example: I use a side-by-side fridge for lagering (freezer side) and serving (fridge side). (I control the temp at 33F on the freezer side which gives me a low to mid 40F serving temp on the fridge side.) I chose ball locks because they’re skinnier. I open the door to serve so I like to put two kegs side-by-side to serve: usually one dark and one light (which is relative depending on the season). There’s a condiment tray in the door I converted to a drip tray to collect the rare drip.
Photo of serving side of side-by-side fridge. On the left: Amer Amber Ale. On the right: Dark Czech Lager
You may want to consider which you can get most easily. The used keg market is getting very thin so you want to buy what you can get more of. If your supply is equal, then either is a good solution.
Paul
Swivel nuts on the lines, and you can change between disconnects if you need to. A guy in the club has mainly pin locks, but has a ball lock or two for club events.
And remember to tighten those barrel swivel nuts! They tend to work loose/loosen up with hose movement, etc… and you can lose a lot of beer quickly — speaking from recent experience!
Righty tighty!
I have pin locks but if I had it to do over again I would have gone the other way. The benefit to pin locks, as others have said, is knowing right away which post is which. On the other hand, it’s not too difficult to break those pins which requires replacing the post. Pin locks are not made any more (or if they are newly manufactured are not well distributed) so the number of kegs available to you are finite.
Right now it’s a little cheaper to buy pin locks because fewer people want them but hard to know how long that will last. Eventually I and other pin lock users will probably have to start buying conversion kits to shift to ball lock. The other big problem is that all or almost all of the newer brewing equipment is designed for ball lock so if you want to use any of that equipment you’ll need to convert or buy ball lock kegs.
I like the old Pepsi ball lock kegs (Cornelius by strong preference), because I can get more of them in my keggerator (ball lock kegs are taller and slimmer than pin lock Coke kegs). Other than that I like the relief valve on the ball lock kegs vs the (whatever it is) on pin lock kegs.
Your mileage may vary, but I recommend ball locks.
Charlie
I’ve had both. What I can say is the one pin lock I had did not have a prv. Because of that I decided to go with ball locks.
I do not have the confusing post problem my gaskets are different colors and it says in and out on the rubber. Just separate when cleaning.
Although either one is OK, I use ball lock kegs since I have lots of parts for them on hand here. When a LHBS close here years ago, I bought out his entire stock of keg parts.
I too never mix up the gas-in and beer-out connectors since I too put different colored o-rings on the tank plugs. Blue is gas-in black is beer-out.
Regarding the mixing up of gas-in and liquid-out on ball-lock kegs, the posts are different sizes so a gas quick-connect won’t fit properly on the liquid side (and vice-versa), although it can be forced. You just have to remember that if it feels wrong it probably is. A little food grade silicon spray will make the O-rings last longer and make connecting/disconnecting easy.
From my experience, you can get the gas-in connector to go on to the beer out side fairly easily and it comes off easily. I used to crank-and-shake carbonate beers this way years ago before I came to the light and rejected the dark side of the force.
The other way around is more difficult. T he beer out connector will not easily go on to the gas-in post and if you force it on, you will have a bitch of a time trying to get it off (I had this happen once and nearly destroyed the connector trying to pry it off. Hence, the use of different colored o-rings as I mentioned previously.
I’m a ball lock guy, and only recently discovered the different colored o-ring trick to avoid gas/liquid confusion.
As for which type is better? The one that is full of delicious beer.
I don’t know if this is part of the confusion mentioned here. But. I’ve always had Corny ball locks. I’ve never confused the posts, because of course gas is notched or has a filleted base, liquid is smooth, and it is actually pretty difficult (though Goose notes the near exception) to cross up the QDs. But my relatively new feremnter (otherwise love it) is a newly US-manufactured, 10 gal ball lock which, if I understand correctly, may follow the Firestone model – and UNLIKE the genuine Cornies and new copies, the posts have different threads, and cannot be put on the “wrong” side. So if you’ve marked your kegs with a spot of paint or whatnot, you can’t possibly get them reversed after disassembling for cleaning. I personally find this monumentally annoying, but that’s me.