mini kegging?!

Tried searching for a thread but couldn't really find anything similar to my situation. So, after bottle carbing for 1 year I decided that I would do a little upgrading of my setup so I bought a mini keg setup from my lhbs.



Comes with 4 of these little buggers and one tap. you put a Co2 cartridge on the tap and then basically dispense the beer. which is all the instructions that are included with this (which are in german). So now I'm full of questions.

If I fill the I can only have the tap (which is the only way to carb it) on one keg at a time. So do I leave the other 3 unpressurized until the tap is freed up and then wait a few days for it to carb? Or am I supposed to mostly carbonate with corn sugar (because that kind of eliminates the purpose)? and then use the C02 for dispensing? Doesn't look like the bung/plug thing is really built to hold much pressure untill the tap is on it. Kinda confused. I've got a pale ale that needs to go in these hopefully sunday.

I'm pretty sure you are supposed to carbonate with sugar and just use the cartridge to dispense the beer.

so would you use the same amount as you would for bottling? I suppose the bungs could hold under pressure.

So that would make the process about the same... except I'd have beer on tap as opposed to opening a bottle every 5 minutes. So, it would save me no carbonation time at all? and it will cost more?

The larger systems use no sugar correct? you just basically have a large c02 tank feeding the keg and with enough pressure to push it up the hose and out the tap? Only real pain is having a dedicated fridge in my 2 bedroom apartment. ha ha.

I would try the same as when bottling, you should be fine. If I bought those I would have to find a way to pour one of those with out the co2 cask conditioned style.

tip it upside down and pull the lever

NO, when priming minikegs you use only 1 tablespoon of corn sugar.

Since you have the gravity tap built in the bottom you don't need a tapper w/CO2 cartridges.

Replace the tap (faucet) with the black rubber bung (with the red plastic key).

so if you are using 1 tbs per keg what would that make it for 5 gallons?
What size are those kegs?

They're 1 gallon kegs. The drain plug on the bottom is kind of weird and I'm not entirely sure it would work as a tap. You twist it, and then pull it out. It seems like it would spray beer everywhere as you were pulling it.

So, it wouldn't work if I siphoned the beer on top of 3/4 cup corn sugar in my bottling bucket and then filled the kegs and put the remaining gallon in Bottles? Would that be too much carbonation for the bung to hold, or for the beer to dispense properly?

Those look like standard 5L mini kegs to me. They can be bought from many beer supply stores: midwestsupplies, homebrewadventures. You can also recycle commercial kegs (available at many/most liquor stores.) Around Ohio you can buy a 5L keg of commercial beer for around $15 - less than the equivalent in bottles - so it's quite a deal if you can find a beer you enjoy in one.

Since they are used for distributing commercial brews they'll hold pressure just fine; Although I've heard that you do need to be careful if you're using them for forced carbonation.

The 'drain' is actually a tap that can be used for serving; you need to relieve the pressure in the keg or it will spray foam everywhere. The commercial kegs have an air valve integrated into the top bung to vent excess CO2 when you start serving, as well as to let air in as the beer is served to equalize pressure.

Anyway, 4 of those kegs adds up to about 5 gal of beer, so I'd guess that it's intended to be used to keg and naturally carbonate a full 5gal batch of beer, with the CO2 system used for serving. Not a bad little setup. How much did you pay for the tap?

The main knocks on them for homebrewing is that the inner lining wears off after several re-uses, they can be a bit fragile, and you need to buy or make non-standard fittings to serve from them.

dp69_2001 said:

They're 1 gallon kegs. The drain plug on the bottom is kind of weird and I'm not entirely sure it would work as a tap. You twist it, and then pull it out. It seems like it would spray beer everywhere as you were pulling it.

So, it wouldn't work if I siphoned the beer on top of 3/4 cup corn sugar in my bottling bucket and then filled the kegs and put the remaining gallon in Bottles? Would that be too much carbonation for the bung to hold, or for the beer to dispense properly?

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NO!!! That's NOT a drain plug...it's your TAP!! :rockin: It's a built in gravity tap. To use these you need to open the top bung first to allow air inside the keg then the bottom to complete the flow.

Yes, if you prime the entire batch as normal you will be overpriming if you put it into minikegs.

Priming is 1 TBS like I said before. Overpriming will ruin your kegs by bulging and leaking.

Here's what you do if you are going to minikeg and bottle:

1. Pour 1 TBS Corn Sugar into minikeg.
2. Rack beer into minikeg.
3. When full, fit bung into place. Roll on counter to mix up sugar.
4. Check for leaks.
5. No leaks? Done.
6. Measure remaining beer in bottling bucket.
7. Measure and use .8 oz corn sugar per gallon of beer.
8. Mix in dissolved corn sugar/beer solution into bucket.
9. Bottle as usual.

Sweet. sounds good. the tap also came from my LHBS (which really isn't so local) They sell the tap for 79 dollars. Mini kegs for 13 dollars. the set up was supposed to come with food grade C02 cartridges but they were out. Wouldn't using the gravity tap only work if I was drinking the keg within a couple hour period of time? I'd hate for the beer to get flat, and I rarely have people helping me drink it

if you are pouring by gravity, cask conditioned beer is generally best if consumed with in 72 hrs. If you serve with co2 it should last a lot longer. If I were you I would check out carb tabs for bottling the remainder

yeah, I have some carb tabs from last year I'll use. However, I think I underestimated the difference between 5l and 1 gallon, so it seems that I'll have plenty of room for one 5gallon batch in 4 5l kegs. Hopefully all 4 kegs won't be empty by the time my next brew is done. lol. thanks everyone for your helpful advice.

I have seen sites where people have created connectors to combine the mini kegs into kegerators.

Kind of thinking about something like that, myself. A three tap, portable, mini-kegorator in a 70qt cube cooler. One 3 gallon keg and two 5L kegs, with a three tap tower.

Midwest sells these, and has a PDF infosheet on these, that contains a good mit more information, and is in English!
Party Star Deluxe Tap System :: Midwest Supplies Homebrewing and Winemaking Supplies

It is my understanding that you naturally carb, like you would with bottling, then use CO2 to dispence.

That is the same tap but not sure if the kegs are the same. It would be nice to have a mini kegerator. My mini fridge could hold about 2 of them.

Also, they sell mini kegerators that sit on your counter and keep the keg cold and dispenses the beer and everything. That might be a good investment for me. But, I'm reading that after they are tapped the kegs will only last about 24 hours in one. Maybe it's the way it does it. Hopefully the little tap I have will hold pressure for longer than 24 hours since I only drink 2-3 beers a day.

I think you're thinking of the heineken/Krups counter top beer dealie...
Heineken Krups Beertender B95 Kegerator Beer Dispenser from and Krups | BeverageFactory.com

I'm not sure if all 5L kegs work in it or if Heineken has a proprietary keg type...

edit:
For now, the device only works with Heineken’s miniscule DraughtKeg. And that’s too bad, seeing as the 5-liter size is fairly standard for European beers, which could lend this mini beerfest a huge potential market if the tap hookup were more universal.

From here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/home_journal_news/4253134.html

There's this one too...
The Green Head - Avanti Mini Pub - Countertop Mini Keg Beer Dispenser

They're both a little spendy, but might be a nice option for cramped spaces...

Whole list of them. They're all rather expensive and a few of them have rather poor reviews. but I'm guessing there are quite a few people that don't know how to use them properly. Almost thinking it would be cheaper to do a mini fridge convert and have 2 taps coming out the top of it. Anyone tried anything similar?

Mini Kegerators & Mini Beer Keg Dispensers at Kegerator.com

Edit: well there was a whole list of them about 4 hours ago. now there's only 1 lol.

the guy at my lhbs had a similar setup, but he said he screwed carbonator caps onto them [the part where the c02 bulb goes in, I didn't get a good look at it], and hooked that up to his co2 tank to carb.

dp69_2001 said:

Whole list of them. They're all rather expensive and a few of them have rather poor reviews. but I'm guessing there are quite a few people that don't know how to use them properly. Almost thinking it would be cheaper to do a mini fridge convert and have 2 taps coming out the top of it. Anyone tried anything similar?

Mini Kegerators & Mini Beer Keg Dispensers at Kegerator.com

Edit: well there was a whole list of them about 4 hours ago. now there's only 1 lol.

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my chest freezer that holds 4 kegs (6 with colar)was only $20 more brand new.

dp69_2001 said:

Sweet. sounds good. the tap also came from my LHBS (which really isn't so local) They sell the tap for 79 dollars. Mini kegs for 13 dollars. the set up was supposed to come with food grade C02 cartridges but they were out. Wouldn't using the gravity tap only work if I was drinking the keg within a couple hour period of time? I'd hate for the beer to get flat, and I rarely have people helping me drink it

Click to expand...

Yes, they are made for killing within a hour or so...but I've never had any problem doing that.

I got all my kegs from Germany where they were about $8 full of local German beer...not $15 empty like in the US.

Thought I'd throw an update on here for anyone who's happening upon this dead thread. The mini kegs were kind of neat for a while, but what happened is I had a hefewiezen that didn't completely ferment in 2 weeks, and I put it right in the kegs. Well, 2 weeks later 1 of the kegs had expanded to the point of being unusable and 1 had blown off the bung in the top and ruined the keg (which is what got me investigating).

Honestly, for the 100ish dollars I spent on this setup you could easily build a soda keg dispensing unit.

I went for a brand new GE fridge, a two tap tower, new regs and bottle and I think I only ended up with about 400 into it. However you can find used fridges for $0-$25 in the local paper or free classifieds pretty frequently. Kegs I learned vary quite a bit depending on where you get them from I found a guy in the city that sells them for nearly half of what I got the first 2 for and in my town at least it's much more cost effective to exchange CO2 bottles at the Coke distribution center (though you do have to make a deposit on the first one).

Overall, I think I could have built a decent single keg and picnic tap setup for right around 150 or 200. Been using my setup for about 8 months now, and I can't believe I never did it before. I'm producing clearer, cleaner beer than ever before. With pretty predictable carbonation levels and having a tap in your home is just about enough to make any man happy with life...