What to do with 1/2 barrel keg

A friend of mine had someone who came to his house bring a keg for a party. The person never took it and after 6 months he asked if I wanted it.

So, now I have an empty 1/2 barrel. I have a keezer bar at home that'll hold a 1/2 barrel plus a pony keg so I tried contacting some local breweries, who said they wouldn't fill it..

Once i get into a larger place, I could see myself taking up homebrewing. Is there a reason people seem to use corny kegs rather than sankes (easier to clean? don't brew large quantities)? Will this be useful to me in the future if I do homebrew? If not, any other ideas for ways to fill or use it?

Thanks for the input!

 

The "proper" answer would be: "be a good, honest citizen and take it back".

The gear junky in me says "cut the b*tch and make yourself a keggle."

 

use it to ferment in

 

Normally you just drop it off for a deposit when purchasing another keg. You could hang on to it and make a keggle out of it later if you wanted.

 

@brewmcq -- i don't even know where they got the keg from. If my friend knew the person who brought it, I'm sure he'd have them remove it from his backyard instead of asking if anyone wanted it, especially as the person likely left a deposit on it.

thanks for the other suggestions. Not sure if liquor stores can identify their kegs or not..will I have any trouble if I drop it off in lieu of a deposit for the next keg I get since theres a 99.9% chance it won't be the one it came from. If i decide to take up brewing my own, I guess I could just hold onto the last keg I get and use that for fermenting since I won't have money tied up?

 

There are some cool plug and play accessories for turning a half barrel into a state of the art SS fermentor, and I would say of that's the route you wanna go, just have it as a dedicated fermenter and nothin more. OR, you could ferment in it, then slap the snake fittings back on, pressurize it, and suck the yeast cake up off the bottom so the beer goes from lauter to glass in the same vessel. Ooh that gives me the beer nerd chills

 

In that case, the "proper response" would be: "be a good, honest citizen and return it to the local distributor."

I'd still cut the b*tch up and use it for a keggle.

 

What was in the keg? I thought the kegs were most likely owned by breweries, not party stores.

 

Are there any names or distinguishing marks on the keg?

Keep in mind that a brewery bought and paid for the keg. It belongs to them.

 

Likely the liquor store won't care where you got it. They'll send it back with their shipment of empties.

You could always just return it to a store and collect the deposit back.

Though I'm with BrewMcQ, turn it in to a keggle.

 

I do not know about the OP's area but where I live you have to have a receipt to return a shell. otherwise they assume that the keg was purchased years ago when the deposits were still only $10 and will not do an even deposit trade. The price of being honest nowadays.

The honest thing to do it to turn it in at a place that sells kegs and say that someone left it at your house. You may not even get a deposits worth out of it but you would get the warm fuzzy feeling of having done right by the brewery. Unless it was a BMC shell, F them (I kid, I kid).

Other things people do with shells is turn them into keggles, fermenters, or pull the spiral ring remove the spear clean and refill the keg. Other people turn them into bar stools, grills, etc.

 

Should you wish to follow the straight and narrow (and honestly, lost kegs are a big expense, especially for small breweries), you might be able to identify the source via www.kegreturn.com.