DaveSeattle
Well-Known Member
In my keezer, I have 5 corny kegs and 2 of the aluminum minikegs, 7 total taps, which is mostly awesome. The minikegs sit on top of the cornies and let me have more varieties of beer on tap at once. However I've found that the minikegs are cesspools of infection, with >50% of batches getting infected despite soaking in PBW, scrubbing, then soaking in StarSan. So now I'm looking for a replacement. Criteria:
1. No taller than 8". Rules out just putting a corny keg on its side.
2. Must hold at least 4L/1 gallon. I don't want to have to be constantly swapping these out. (If I remove this criteria, I could use 2L bottles with carbonator caps, but I'd have to swap them every 4 beers.)
3. Must be capable of holding serving pressure.
4. I have to be able to hook the beer and gas lines to them somehow. Willing to DIY, but it has to be gas-tight.
Things I've evaluated:
1. Beer Box. Would work great, but expensive - $200. And some DIY would be required to create a dip tube and to connect a gas QD to the Schrader valve input.
2. Party pig - out of business, and pouches are expensive for this use case.
3. Water containers like Aquatainer - unclear whether these would hold pressure and whether I could get them gas-tight, but may be an option.
4. Chaining 2L bottles, somehow. I don't know how this could work but maybe I could arrange it so I can connect several of them together. Seems like a pain.
5. Using corny kegs outside the keezer but passing them through a jockey box type coil inside the fridge. My keezer is in the garage so I have space to do this but I think the temperature variations in the garage would hurt the beer quality, and without immersing the coils in ice water (which I don't think would be feasible in the small space) I don't think I'd get enough chilling to bring the temperature down much. Incidentally I have a separate beer cellar where I serve cellar temperature beers so serving the beers at a higher temperature from this keezer is not appealing.
6. Just giving up and having fewer taps. But then I'd either have 2 permanently empty taps (sad) or two empty holes in my keezer (ugly).
Any ideas?
Any ideas?
1. No taller than 8". Rules out just putting a corny keg on its side.
2. Must hold at least 4L/1 gallon. I don't want to have to be constantly swapping these out. (If I remove this criteria, I could use 2L bottles with carbonator caps, but I'd have to swap them every 4 beers.)
3. Must be capable of holding serving pressure.
4. I have to be able to hook the beer and gas lines to them somehow. Willing to DIY, but it has to be gas-tight.
Things I've evaluated:
1. Beer Box. Would work great, but expensive - $200. And some DIY would be required to create a dip tube and to connect a gas QD to the Schrader valve input.
2. Party pig - out of business, and pouches are expensive for this use case.
3. Water containers like Aquatainer - unclear whether these would hold pressure and whether I could get them gas-tight, but may be an option.
4. Chaining 2L bottles, somehow. I don't know how this could work but maybe I could arrange it so I can connect several of them together. Seems like a pain.
5. Using corny kegs outside the keezer but passing them through a jockey box type coil inside the fridge. My keezer is in the garage so I have space to do this but I think the temperature variations in the garage would hurt the beer quality, and without immersing the coils in ice water (which I don't think would be feasible in the small space) I don't think I'd get enough chilling to bring the temperature down much. Incidentally I have a separate beer cellar where I serve cellar temperature beers so serving the beers at a higher temperature from this keezer is not appealing.
6. Just giving up and having fewer taps. But then I'd either have 2 permanently empty taps (sad) or two empty holes in my keezer (ugly).
Any ideas?
Any ideas?
