Grab your pin locks now!

I just got 5 kegs from someone who works at Coke for a total of $15 per keg. Sweet deal, I just threw out a price and he took it.

Anyways, he said Coke is switching from kegging for their pre-mix stuff to boxes, like packaged lined wine boxes. That means Coke will no longer use these kegs.

Will keg manufacturers stop making pin locks?
Are there enough kegs in circulation by homebrewers to not worry about it?

Either way, just thought I'd throw this information out there. Maybe you want to stock up or not.

No kegs around here for years. Boxes with bags in them.

I think there is plenty of supply around for us.

oh ok. I'm just paranoid then. My first dip into kegging and I'm thinking they're on the brink of extinction. OK

Pepsi bottler in Danbury CT told me the same 2 years ago when I bought 10 ball locks off him.

They are definitely getting rarer and pricier over the last several years due to the move to "soda in a bag". I bought a few for $20 or so each, and now the same kegs are $50 each. They are still around, though, at least for the near future.

Yup, they'll just get more expensive, but they will be around.

Where to find these kegs. I just got a kegerator and need to find a few. Also need to convert the kegerator from sank

Check craigslist. If you don't see it there, check again in a week. I thought I'd never find them, and that was only 2 weeks ago. Since looking, I've seen at least 8 ads, and I chose the best price.

if it's a last resort, I came across extra kegs so I could sell them to you. However, shipping would make it counter-intuitive. Unless I fill it with helium!

mciaio said:

No kegs around here for years. Boxes with bags in them.

I think there is plenty of supply around for us.

Click to expand...

only post mix is sold in bag in box. They still use cornys for pre mix. Now if what the op was told is true then maybe they are coming up with something new which is entirely possible.

i'm surprised anyone is still using cornys for soda. when i worked in good ol' fast food 10 years ago it was all bags.

there is a real limited market for pre mix just because of the profit margin. If you are running a restaurant or high traffic environment then the profit is in postmix. There is of course more upfront costs with the carbonator, good filtered water and such. Pre mix is most often seen now in some smaller concession trailers, like you might see for a boy scout fundraiser or the like. Then it is just much easier to use a pre mix setup and you aren't dependent on having a good reliable water source.

Small mom&pop shops and carny's still use corny's.

I have a local bistro in Columbia SC that uses Coke pin locks even now. Saw it last Friday.

MC

I saw thousands at a college football game last year.

There's an amusement part not too far from me that uses premix soda kegs exclusively I think. You can see trailers worth of kegs sitting around in various points of it's use cycle.

News of upcoming shortages, especially if it's widely announced, is self fulfilling because it causes people to horde supplies. It immediately drives up prices.

As someone who is trying to get into kegging, I would like to kick hoarders in the nuts, unless of course you would like to sell some without a one hundred percent markup over what you paid.

just keep in mind-

you always get what you pay for. and, hopefully, kegs are a relatively long term investment.

i paid $20each for two recently. one is decent, the other doesn't seal very well at all. constantly have to struggle with it. nothing is more frustrating than a leaky keg.

motobrewer said:

just keep in mind-

you always get what you pay for. and, hopefully, kegs are a relatively long term investment.

i paid $20each for two recently. one is decent, the other doesn't seal very well at all. constantly have to struggle with it. nothing is more frustrating than a leaky keg.

Click to expand...

And don't forget that seals and poppets are a wear item.

MC

I didn't know any were still in use, but I guess it makes sense. I worked at Taco Bell 15 years ago and it was all in bags. But before that, I worked concession stands for high school baseball and basketball games where corny kegs were used. Makes sense for situations like that, with essentially untrained staff and most importantly no water lines that pre-mixed solutions would be way more convenient. What to replace this with? I don't know...I hear they're selling pre-mixed product where it's already portioned into convenient 12 and 20 oz sizes...I've even heard they go as big as 2 liters!

I worked in a steak house 25 years ago in a small town in the sticks of Ohio and they had converted it 1984 to the boxes.

mendozer said:

Check craigslist. If you don't see it there, check again in a week. I thought I'd never find them, and that was only 2 weeks ago. Since looking, I've seen at least 8 ads, and I chose the best price.

Click to expand...

Checking CL is sound advice. However, if you want a deal, you need to check it more than once a week. I find that the good deals go very quickly. If you are on the prowl, check it daily, if not multiple times daily.

You can also set up Google Alerts for your key search terms.

All of you will hate me as much as I hate myself for my corny keg history. I used to run food concessions on a carnival. Back then I kept an inventory of 30-40 ball locks at a time. Deposits were cheap, usually $10. Most of my time was spent in IN/IL/KY and I would just trade empties for fulls at the plants. As I worked my way south many of the plants in GA wouldnt take kegs stamped from another region. As truck space is limited, I have in my lifetime left hundreds of kegs on fairgrounds. I knew of no other use for them at the time (been out of this business for 14 yrs now). I have seen thousands of them over my lifetime left this way as it was common for all of us to do. I still know many people who use them for grease drains and all sorts of uses.

to think, those souls are wasted! those poor kegs being used as grease traps...it pains me