Keg Heaven

Cruising to the store today and I saw this about a mile from my house ... I'm going to head up there tomorrow and see what I can get some of these for. I stopped to take a look, seems to be mostly pin lock. I dont care what they are so long as I can get them cheap. they went all the way around the building, there has to be over a thousand.

that's beautiful...

there is a place like that here in Salt Lake City but he wants 30 bucks a pice and they re not rebuilt.

Wow... a midnight visit might be called for. I doubt they would miss a dozen or so of them.

damn... brings a tear to my eye

....I want.....

snccoulter said:

there is a place like that here in Salt Lake City but he wants 30 bucks a pice and they re not rebuilt.

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Sure you can find cheaper ones on line....but the shipping will bring them above 30 bucks. 'Rebuilt' is over-rated IMHO. I only change the o-rings that need changing anyway, which usually means...none. Around here at least, 30 bucks isn't cheap....but it ain't unfair.

Edit: Course that's for ball locks....pins....wouldn't give 10 bucks for since my set up is all ball-lock.

Man, if I had a pickup and a strong friend... all you need is one pallet!

Please report back tomorrow! I live like an hour-ish away and would love to pick some up if the price was right.

Any updates on this?

I didnt make it out over the weekend, I spoke to the guy on the phone though and he told me $20 per keg. he mentioned something about changing them out to ball locks for me too. I am going to head up there tomorrow and see if I can get him to do 10 for $150.

Wow great deal... specially if he is going to do additional work to them and not just toss you a pallet, lol.

Can I get the name/phone number of this place?

sure, let me try and work my deal some first though. They are just next to some guys house so I dont know how eager he is to deal with home brewers.

If you guys are close enough, get together and see if you can do like a group buy....he'll probably go much cheaper if you're buying in bulk

Paid a visit today, got ten kegs for $150, , well 140 plus a case of Gatorade that I picked up for the guy. These guys are cool, he let me switch out the pin lock posts with ball locks, and gave me spare lids, posts, popits etc .. he told me to just come back if I need any spare parts. The cooler that I put the gatorade in for them was already full of beer .. he had several thousand kegs on site and told me he would be out of town this week to get more. Some interesting things .... he is selling most of these to overseas plants in India and China ... but he sells to some home brew supply stores as well. he said all US production will be the bag in the box type soon, and these kegs are just from older plants that still use them. He said that Pepsi style kegs are almost completely gone, and that pin lock will be the only type available soon. Also, Coke has phased out kegs too so within the next couple years as these kegs get bought and sold overseas, there will be no more. Sounds like its time to get stocked up. The guy is a bulk dealer so he is not real interested in selling a keg or two to us home brew guys, but it turns out we both went to the same high school so he hooked me up. In my area 75% of the population is new migration .. mostly from up north ... his first question to me was "are you from around here?" I think that helped my cause a good deal. If any of you guys are local and want to pay a visit just PM me and I will send you his details, but I wouldn't go up there unless you want ten and are willing to dig around through them, and switch out the posts on your own or just accept pin lock. Good news though they were just about all under pressure so it was real easy to find the good ones, I think there was only one that I passed on while I was refitting them, and I am sure that one would have been fine with some keg lube ... crazy, all this and about a mile from my house ...



Think of the batches I could make in this ...






This is just one type of post, he had a tub like this for each type and size ...




pick up lines anyone ?



my new kegs ... now I need a keezer ..

Wow nice catch... I'd consider going back and negotiating a parts deal if he has that much laying around. Maybe do it by the pound. A box full of tubes, posts, etc would have you set for a long damn time.

I can't imagine that selling them as scrap is more lucrative then selling to homebrewers....I thought the infamous 'shipping to China' was an urban brewer's legend...I now fear that it may be true.

shroomzofdoom said:

I can't imagine that selling them as scrap is more lucrative then selling to homebrewers....I thought the infamous 'shipping to China' was an urban brewer's legend...I now fear that it may be true.

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There were about 5 Indian looking guys there loading up a box truck. The owner told me they had just bought 5 thousand for some plant in India .. He also told me that Chinese plants do not like the ones with red rubber tops for some reason... funny considering how they have been in the news with all that lead in paint ..

They are not scrap either, he said they use them in the soda plants overseas ... when I 1st called the guy I said something like "I saw some scrap metal on the side of the road .." and his reply was "scrap? hell no they are not for scrap ... "

I'm so jealous.

HBT group buy?

That'd be sweet. So who's got space to store and ship kegs? I'd do it if I were close and had more than a half full garage of space.

I'm thinking maybe a whole palate for the SoCal'ers.

Anyone interested in a few?

Ditto. $50 a piece here where I live.

smokinghole said:

I'm so jealous.

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smokinghole said:

That'd be sweet. So who's got space to store and ship kegs? I'd do it if I were close and had more than a half full garage of space.

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Hmmmm....wonder if it would be worth the hassle?

Reelale said:

Hmmmm....wonder if it would be worth the hassle?

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yeah shipping may kill it .. I want to help but I'm a pretty busy guy. Switching out the posts took me a good hour to do right. getting them boxed and shipped would probably be too time consuming for me .. I told the guy he needs to make a keg outlet web store .. and websites are what I do so maybe he will be interested in that I dont know.. I could tell 10 kegs were small potatoes for this guy, he only helped me out since I was local I think .. but if enough folks are interested and I can get the cost down and you guys dont mind kicking a few bucks per keg back my way to cover my time I might be able to work something out,,, its hard to say right now though. I am slammed with work.

sunblock said:

yeah shipping may kill it .. I want to help but I'm a pretty busy guy. Switching out the posts took me a good hour to do right. getting them boxed and shipped would probably be too time consuming for me .. I told the guy he needs to make a keg outlet web store .. and websites are what I do so maybe he will be interested in that I dont know.. I could tell 10 kegs were small potatoes for this guy, he only helped me out since I was local I think .. but if enough folks are interested and I can get the cost down and you guys dont mind kicking a few bucks ber keg back my way to cover my time I might be able to work something out,,, its hard to say right now though. I am slammed with work.

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I've got some time on my hands until September 20, and I'm close to you. Maybe we could double-team something and make it worth everyone's while.

Sunblock, looks like your inbox is getting slammed!

What a great find, the absolute best price I've been able to get them is right around $30. Closer to $40 at my LHBS.

We have a place here that sells all kinds of containers. 6 reconditioned ball locks for $100. The liquor store I work at sells them reconditioned for $40.

arturo7 said:

Sunblock, looks like your inbox is getting slammed!

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yeah, haha, that and it will only hold 5 messages ... i cleared some out.

If we can put something together on this, I think we should all chip in to buy sunblock a membership.

Reelale said:

I've got some time on my hands until September 20, and I'm close to you. Maybe we could double-team something and make it worth everyone's while.

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Cool sounds like a plan then. I would appreciate any extra help and it would be nice to meet up with some local brewers for future bulk buys from north country malt or such. I think I really hit a common thread with this guy so lets take a tally of how many want some and I can approach him with the number. I'm sure the more I get the lower the price, but I will have to add some for shipping materials, time and all that. Not sure who has the best rate on freight, but since they are already on pallets, that would be the best way to go to the west coast ..

Since I did $15 a pop for ten lets at least assume that .. Swapping for ball lock will be the most time consuming part, so if you can use pins that will be great ... if what this guy told me is true upgrading your system to use either pins or balls maybe a wise investment... especially if you get ten pin locks for cheap... I'm sure he wouldn't want me to completely raid his supply of posts either .... I'll take a few days and get a tally and report back. If you want some just post the number you would like, but consider shipping too. My zip is 27504. You guys out west would probably be better off going in together and getting pallets shipped to one location via freight.

Wish it was closer. The shipping would kill it for me or I'd buy a pallet or two, heh.

Tom, I'm working on SoCal palate rate as we speak.

Yeah I was working on that myself casually. With as many of us in the area I wouldn't be surprised if we couldn't pull off quite a few pallets.

I figure about 200lbs per pallet, yeah? That's pretty light.



I'm beginning to wonder if there might be somebody in SoCal who also collects and re-sells cornies.

Hmmm....

If I were local to that I would buy a couple hundred and resell them. Buying at ten bucks a pop you could refurb (just verify pressure) and resell at 20-25 a pop easy.

Yeah probably about 200 a pallet. They are around ten each empty... that is 16 plus the pallet.

TomSD said:

If I were local to that I would buy a couple hundred and resell them. Buying at ten bucks a pop you could refurb (just verify pressure) and resell at 20-25 a pop easy.

Yeah probably about 200 a pallet. They are around ten each empty... that is 16 plus the pallet.

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yeah, i'm not far from that logic, I already own a company though and have more work than I need. To me theres only so much I can do in a day and keep my sanity.

200 lbs sounds high, whats the weight of one keg x 16 ? that + the pallet. maybe .. kegs cant be more than 5 pounds each though, they feel pretty lite ..

I usually see them listed as ten but that could be just rounding/averaging up.