Is this a good find?

Ok, I found a local soda pop distributor that will sell me used cornies for $15 per if I drive over and pick them up. I'll have to clean and rebuild them and have already ordered the parts for McMaster. Is this a good deal? I'm just now starting to build a kegging system.

Yes. 15 - 18 is a great price given that there is no shipping.
Many of us would be envious.
Be prepared to do some cleaning on them. If they are in good shape, buy as many as you can afford.

Yup, not bad at all. Jump on it.

Thanks. I thought it sounded pretty good and not having shipping is a plus. I just googled there location and it's a bit farther than I thought it was (75 miles), but I'll make the trip to save some money.

I'd buy as many as they'll sell you, if you're making the trip anyway. Good find!

Sounds like a deal. If you have a choice, try to stay away from the ones that smell like root beer. I've heard that bottling companies run root beer through completely separate lines to avoid them "smellifying" the other sodas.

Something about the rootbeer smell is pert near impossible to get rid of.

Yeah, you can't run root beer through regular beer lines either. You'll have to change out the lines if you want to use a different product. We did this at a restaurant I used to manage. Nightmare to have the lines rerun.

I was thinking of picking up 5 as that would represent 3 10 gallon batches including the one I picked up at the lhbs a few weeks ago. I may pick up 7 though. Then I could have one for root beer for the kidos and one extra. The trick might be keeping them full though.

Remember, you can condition in them, too. Once I get my kegging setup all going, I plan on having a couple lagers conditioning in kegs pretty much all the time.

Heads up! I just got a great deal at northernbrewer... just order a four pack of reconditioned cornys for 59.95. even with the monster shipping charge of $26 its still about $21 a keg. just search for used kegs. this is a smoking deal if you happen to live near there since i dont think they charge for local pickup.

i would say if you are driving 75 miles each way, you will want to get more than 7 kegs to make the gas worth it. i guess the question is how many can you afford to get right now?

I bought my kegs locally from my pepsi bottler for $23 Cdn tax in, but I had to pick them up. Didn't cost me anything for that either as I did it using a company van on my lunch break.

Went down today and picked up 6 kegs from the soda distributor I found. I would have picked up more, but cash funds are a little low. They didn't have change so I got 6 for $80 ($13 a piece). Certainly made the drive worth it.

Edit: Oh, he also said he has about 3000 to get rid of. Think I'll be making a road trip back down there in a few months.

jdoiv said:

Yeah, you can't run root beer through regular beer lines either. You'll have to change out the lines if you want to use a different product.

Click to expand...

I found that out the hard way at home. My beer tasted a little like root beer for a LONG time! I finally managed to get the smell/taste out, but it was mostly through the volume of beer I put through the tap.

NICE find, jdoiv! I'm jealous!