advice?

What started out to be a progessive dinner with the neighborhood has turned into a block party out on the street. I volunteered to make homebrew (a batch that subsequently failed for reasons still unknown to me) but now the City is letting us close the street and do it out there.

Problem: I can't realistically drag the kegerator out to the street corner but I did buy a 3 gal keg and a picknic tap for this purpose. Can I rack beer from a 5 gal keg into my 3 gal without consequences? Also won't all of this movement cause the beer to kick us sludge and cloud up the beer once I move it outside?

Yes, you can rack to a 3 gallon keg without problems. Try not to transfer any sludge to the 3g keg.

You can certainly rack into a 3 gal- I would use a jumper hose (2 out connects), and perhaps push at a lower psi (5 or so). You might lose a slight amount of carbonation, but not too much, and if you hook it up to CO2 overnight, it should be back to normal. If you are careful w/ racking (not banging the 5 gal around) you should have no more sediment kick up than if you pulled a pint.

Is it really that much trouble to just use a 5 gallon keg? I wouldn't think it would be worth the time and expense to rack over to a 3 gallon keg. But hey, that's just my $.02. I'm sure you have your reasons.

My neighborhood is having a block party later today. I picked up a 70qt Igloo Ice Cube cooler, popped off the lid and replaced it with a piece of rigid foam insulation that I had laying around, because a 5 gallon corny sticks up a few inches above the top of the cooler. It woks great, a few other people around also use the Ice Cube cooler. You should be able to find some pictures around here somewhere.

llenrocs said:

Is it really that much trouble to just use a 5 gallon keg? I wouldn't think it would be worth the time and expense to rack over to a 3 gallon keg. But hey, that's just my $.02. I'm sure you have your reasons.

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Not really but the 5 gallon bucket I would use to keep the 5 gal keg in is too short for me to get the ice over the beer. A 3 gal covers up nicely and then some.

It doesn't need to be completely covered in ice, if you can get the bottom 2/3 in there it will stay cold.