Is a frozen corny keg automatically ruined?

So I started setting up my kegerator last night, using the Frididaire fridge from Lowes. I wanted to see how cold it would get, figuring it would only be about 35-40F on the lowest setting. Well, low and behold, I checked on it this morning, and both my thermometer in the water cup and the keg were frozen solid. I saw on a forum awhile back that the keg might be ruined because it wouldn't seal anymore. So would the entire keg be ruined, or would I need to just buy a new lid for it? I have it thawing out right now inside the house. The worst part of it was that it was the 3 gallon keg that i bought for $80 off of Craigslist. Of course it couldn't be the cheap 5 gallon kegs that I froze, nope, just the expensive one. Darn...

You won't know until you test it. Why speculate on not sealing at this point?

I just bought this unit to and have set it to 1 and will be checking on it when I get home in about 6 hours. I hope my keg hasn't frozen!!! I need this BEER!! ahaha

I froze a keg before and it seems fine to me now... I even thawed it out and drank some of the beer for a while. LOL.

Not sure why a stainless steel corny wouldn't seal anymore after freezing? The seals are mostly rubber O-rings and you can replace those pretty easily. Also, freezing should have little impact on them, I would think?

I almost froze another one just a day or two ago, but caught it in time. Now i am using a johnson controls temp controller to cut the fridge off at 40F, since the thermostat (1-6 wheel) doesn't do a very good job. There is no middle ground, its like either 30F or 45-50F.

It will depend on how hard it froze. There may be no problem at all. If it expanded enough to deform the keg opening, you may have a real hard time getting it straightened out to seal. But I certainly wouldn't throw it away until I exhausted every effort to make it usable.

Good luck.

Mine just barely froze, for what its worth. It was more like beer slushy in the keg and frozen beer in the line.

I would think you would have had to have a pretty darn full keg and a pretty hard freeze to deform the keg, but heck I have no clue!

I just pulled a pint from a keg that was frozen yesterday. It was an over-attenuated wit. It tastes better (more body, a bit darker maybe) than it did last week, so I popped open the keg and sure enough, the top is still frozen. Eiswit anybody?

yogensha said:

I just pulled a pint from a keg that was frozen yesterday. It was an over-attenuated wit. It tastes better (more body, a bit darker maybe) than it did last week, so I popped open the keg and sure enough, the top is still frozen. Eiswit anybody?

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Awesome!!