Personally, I would only bother with the conversion if you have other kegs that are ball-lock and want them to all be the same, or have some height limitations that would be better with the ball-lock.
One option we recommend at the shop is to get liquid and gas couplers with removable flares on them so you can connect the liquid and gas line to either ball-lock or pin lock kegs as needed.
I wouldn’t bother with the conversion. It takes me literally 5 seconds to swap out the connector (assuming you’r using threaded connectors vs barbed ones). I guess I do sometimes misplace the connectors and have to hunt them down which might take another 5 mins…
I honestly dont understand the obsession with converting to ball locks. I like my pin locks, i like my ball locks, why would i want to spend more money to make them all the same. The other issues is keg makes can have different threads, so those conversion kits may not all be the same.
Is there much difference in height and width of ball vs pin? I’ve got a bunch of ball lock but I need several more kegs and pin lock are about 1/3 of the price of new ball locks. I can’t find used ball locks anywhere. As has been mentioned, switching adapters isn’t that big a deal. I’d probably just switch two and leave three of my taps as ball locks and try to remember to use both.
As of today, I have all my kegs full and need 3 for kolsch, 2 for wit, 2 for bitter, 2 for irish red and 1 for saison that are all ready to go. Buying bigger fermenters may have been a mistake…
No I just use a crescent wrench… it’s kind of a pain though… or you could get a regular socket and put it to fit… I just deal with the wrench… It only adds like 2 minutes onto the take apart procedure lol.
EDIT: I should say the only bad thing about the crescent wrench is you have to be careful and avoid the posts so you don’t bend them. It’s what makes it slightly time consuming… avoiding the posts while avoiding the keg handles as well…
I agree I really like those 3 gallon pin lock kegs Adventures has right now. I have a couple myself… Though I think I’m good at 2 because I don’t often brew small batches… occasionally I do brew an 8 gallon batch though which I use one of these for the ‘overflow’