keg kits

Both my son & I brew - I'm into wine & he's into everything! I'm getting a little gun shy due to his alarming success in exploding things. I'm short so getting up to the ceiling to clean is difficult at times. He wants a keg kit for Xmas and I have been looking around. How dangerous is this? He's quite capable of building it himself but a 5 foot tall tank is scaring the bejesus out of me.

 

What are you talking about? We use Corny kegs here. Most common size is 5 gal. They really aren't that dangerous if you get the right equipment, as in a working regulator.

He would have to be very skilled to build a pressurizable SS "keg".

 

The tank is a co2 tank, not a keg. I don't know what a corny keg is yet; I'm just trying to figure out how much life insurance I need or if I need it at all.

 

Well, I still don't know what he would be "building", but most brewers use a 5-20lb CO2 tank. A 5 lb one is like 1.5 ft tall and the 20 lb tank looks like a scuba tank.

Corny kegs are what the beer goes in. They have a reusable lid that allows for easy refilling and cleaning. You have to get quick disconnects (QDs) for the keg, one for gas and one for liquid (they are different).

There are two types of corny kegs: ball-lock (Pepsi) and pin-lock (Coke). Ball locks are generally more expensive because of the higher demand. Why higher demand? They are taller and skinnier than a pin-lock, so its easier to fit a bunch of them in a chest freezer (which is called a keezer when being used for kegs).

I personally use pin-locks b/c they were cheaper (cornykeg.com). But I sometimes wish I had ball-locks to make more efficient use out of my keezer.

Hope this helps, and I think the lively-hood of you and your son is OK. But then again, you do know him better than I do.....