Just bought 4 used ball lock corny kegs on ebay. I’ve been planning on eventually getting into kegging for awhile but had visions of a big chest freezer with a collar and taps, etc, etc.
In my current mild scotch haze I decided I just needed to get some kegs in the basement to start with and work my way up from there. I have no idea what all is needed or more than a vague idea of how its done but that’s been pretty much the story of my homebrewing career thus far so I’m guessing I’ll figure it out as I go along.
Well, I just went through the whole process…be more than willing to share, pm me for a phone # or I can just wear off my fingerprints typing away here…
You get marginally less CO2 out of a refrigerated tank than a warm one. That is not a good reason to me.
The secondary gauges are not very responsive at refrigerated temps (I just learned this in one of the threads here), so if the tank is inside the fridge the gauges probably are too. This is a very good reason to me.
Still not a good enough reason to drill a bunch of holes in the side of the fridge… OK, you have to fine tune the pressure a few hours later and the bottle will last 54 weeks instead of 55…
Ok, here’s the first of what I’m sure will be a large number of basic questions:
How do I get the poppet valves out of the posts? I took one of the kegs apart last night and cleaned it but I couldn’t figure out how to get the poppet out. I watched this video and the guy just taps on top of the post and the poppet falls out. That didn’t work for me.
Tap harder… There’s nothing holding it in… If that fails poke. If you break it replace it they’re cheap. And since there’s a rubber seal in it that’s not a bad idea anyways.
I am a little late reading this thread and trying to catch up. Let me see if I understand this correctly. My gig is in the keezer. Is the problem you are discussing just the speed of adjustment of the guages or is their a carbonation deficiency associated with it?
I’m sure I could get that out if I want to. I’m also sure that I’ll break it in the process. I’m fine replacing the poppet. If it’s that stuck then I’d want to replace it before using anyway. I just want to make sure that’s what I should be doing before I bust it up.
Excuse me if I’m stating the obvious, but you are trying to get it out -looking at the picture- towards you right? Have you tried putting a small screw driver or awl in there and leveraging it out?
There is a small plastic-ish material cone seal in there… I had one that was broken and looking at your picture very closely it almost looks like I see a piece in there… Could be jammed on something. You have one of those lamps with a magnifying glass? Take a real close look at what’s going on in there…
I was able to pry it out after considerable effort. It was really jammed up in there. I think I’ll just be replacing that one. The out post on the same keg is in the same shape so I’ll need to work on that one as well.
I haven’t taken apart the other three kegs yet but I just went down and pulled off one of the posts from another one and it was fine. These kegs will definitely need some refurbishing before they can be used.
Which poppet valves should I buy for replacements? I’ve looked at a couple of sites and there seems to be some variety depending on the type of keg. Mine are pepsi ball-locks.
I took mine to the LHBS and they had a few different ones…we matched them up. You can probably tell from the pictures on the various vendor websites, but I can’t tell from here. ;D
Looking at the morebeer site they offer two varieties that seem close, the becker and firestone ones. Just eyeballing it the firestone ones seem to look the closest.
Look at the side of the kegs, there should be a manufacturer on it. If you have cornelius kegs, don’t get firestone poppets. And the three “legs” on the poppet in the picture are seriously bent, it probably means that you had the wrong poppet on there in the first place. See if any of the poppets from your other kegs work well with that post, and if so then order ones like that.
