Does anyone know what this is?

My stepdad found this. It looks like something that was once used for homebrew of some sort.[/URL]

 

it looks to me like it could be a still but I honestly don't know. If it is a still then I imagine a copper pipe would be attached to that top post with the hole in it.

 

It looks like a dairy canister but its hard to tell what size the thing is from the pic

 

It could also be a piece of dairy equipment, like a lid for a small milking machine.

 

it looks like it would hold 7-10 gallons

 

Milking machines have more connections, but the size is about right. I wondered if it was some old style corny keg from 100 years ago or something?

 

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That is indeed a milk pot from an automatic milker circa 1930's or 40's. There would have been a vacuum pump hooked to the upper connection and the milkers were hooked to the other two with the valves. This can would have been carried to the cow out in the barn stalls and once the can was full would need to be carried to the bulk tank and dumped to empty. It was a lot of work. I know, I learned how to milk by hand as a kid of about 7 or 8, on my grandfathers 2 cow farm. When I was about 11 or 12 his neighbor, a dairy farmer with about 30 cows, hired me to use a milking machine like that can was part of, to milk for him, while he and his wife went on their first vacation ever. They were in their late 70's at the time. This would have been about 1980.

 

wow thanks for the history lesson! I would have never guessed this had anything to do with milking cows

 

Hm, So I guess like 6 connections, shall we say, went from the teats to the two connections on the can? Seems like another minor detail that slipped my memory. They were shaped more like a demijohn when I was young. Our neighbor in Wakeman, OH was a dairy farmer.

 

Six connections from the teats? A good dairy cow should have, like, four.

 

Did we have any kind of corny kegs a 100 years ago.

 

There would have been a pair on the right and a pair on the left. If I remember right, the tank would be set kind of behind the cow and the hoses would be run up and under the cow to the teats, and yes, there are only 4.

 

Boy, my memories must be fading or something?! Can't hardly walk to hunt anymore, so no more walking through fields & such to hunting grounds anymore. But I do remember the stainless steel rigs with hoses, the demijohn-like part & the hoses with those connector things anyway. I guess 2 outta three, ain't bad?