So... I have some learnin' to do...

[swenocha]

Hmm... look what just showed up. will be fun to learn something new. May have some questions. First comes the cleaning...

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[Beer-lord]

Good on ya. You'll never look back.
And the Borg has your back if you need advise.

[mashani]

They look scary to me.

[Inkleg]

The only scary thing about those kegs is that they are empty.
Welcome to kegging Swen. Happy to answer any questions you have.

[BlackDuck]

Awesome. Now comes the regulator, disconnects, tubing, CO2 tank, picnic taps.....

Really, nice score. You’ll enjoy kegging. Lot easier than bottling for sure.


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[John Sand]

They are just big shiny bottles. Have fun, have beer!

[bpgreen]

I started with two, also. Watch for sales. Every once in a while, someplace will have a big sale (although that seems to happen less often these days).

A few years ago, I bought 8 in a sale where they weren't cleaned or tested. I think they were selling them 4/$100. My thinking was that at that price, if I ended up with 6 working kegs, they'd still be a good deal. One of the boxes arrived really badly damaged. I was out of town, so didn't complain, but they sent a replacement before I even had a chance to examine the contents. Of the 12 kegs that came in, one needed a poppet replaced, and the rest were just fine. I think I had 16 or 17 at one point, so I sold a few off. I think I still have 10 or 12, but only 3 or 4 have beer in them at the moment.

[swenocha]

These were free, which is nice. Of course, the guy who had them generally did sodas in them (last one root beer), so I've got some cleaning to do, but he kept them in pretty good shape. He decided the sodas were more trouble than they were worth, so was going to pitch them, but texted me to see if I wanted them first.

[bpgreen]

Free is good.

You'll probably want to replace the o-rings, also. They may have absorbed smells and flavors from the soda.

[Kealia]

Congrats on the score. Beer on tap to be had soon at Swen's!

[swenocha]

So, I sat on these things for the last quarter. Then over the holiday break, I decided to get this in motion a bit. So a few questions scattered within. Cleaned the two of them up. Ordering O-rings from Amazon, as well as some gas line tubing and new disconnects. Talked with Volunteer Welding, who does carbonation gas, and found that they sell a filled 5 gallon for $85 and/or refills for $11 (good price? or should I look around, buy elsewhere, and just get a refill?). They also have regulators. I have two kegs now, and envision having two taps. Figuring I'll start with 2 picnic taps until I settle on which fridge will ultimately be used for permanent taps (I have a 2-tap tower I could conceivably put on top of a kegerator sized fridge that I have, or I am strongly considering two door mounted taps on the large beer fridge in the garage... decisions... and thus best to start with throwaway taps until I decide). More questions... Thoughts on best scenario for tying the two kegs to the CO2? A single regulator with a distributor? A regulator with two outs from one set of gauges? A regulator with outs from two sets of gauges? Any particular brand? What's a good price? Any other parts or advice to lend on how to build this out? Oh, I feel like such a n00b...

[Beer-lord]

Swen, grab one of these manifolds and you're done. I've had the same (cheap but not the cheapest) one for almost 5 years now.
$85 is not a bad price but you should be able to find one cheaper. They run about $65 here but some LHBS let you swap full ones for empty ones and may have some used ones for sale.
$11 for a refill is a good price in my area. Used to be $10 and now its $15.

[BlackDuck]

$11 for a refill is a great price. I pay around $25 here. I went with a dual regulator. This allows for more growth. I split each one with a shut off valve, so I can run four kegs.

I bought and continue to buy most of my kegging stuff from Kegconnection. Their service is fantastic.
HERE is the regulator that I bought.
THIS is what I used to Y off each regulator. I attached a shut off valve on each side.

I use picnic taps on 10 foot beer lines. I just coil the lines up and rest them on top of the kegs. I'll post a couple pictures later tonight so you can see exactly what I'm talking about.

[berryman]

Swen, I will be following this thread and you progress as I just ordered a keg today. Have to start somewhere and I figured that getting a keg is the first step.

[Kealia]

Swen, I'm running a Taprite regulator like BlackDuck linked to, but I didn't get the dual (which I now regret).
I used picnic taps for the 1st year or two until I got my kegerator, too. I never thought I'd want/need to carb two beers at different volumes, but I do now. And knowing the variety of beer you like and brew, I would guess that you'd want to be able to carb up a pale ale around 2.5 vols while carbing something a Belgian or Berliner Weiss to 3 or 3.5. The regulator he linked to will allow you to do that.

The toughest part of getting kegs set up (IMO) is balancing the keg lines for the right pour. Best advice, buy longer lines than you think you need, and trim off as you need to. That is much easier than buying 6 foot lines (for an example) and then find out you need 8 foot lines.
Balancing the lines is actually pretty easy when you think about it. Use this chart to figure out your temp/PSI combination.

For me, I use about 13 psi at a temp of 46 for my beers.
That means that I need to provide 13 psi of resistance to get the correct pour. Resistance is a combination of gravity/height and beer line resistance. Different lines provide different resistance.
I can't recall off the top of my head what the specs are so I will provide an example here:
- Assume the difference from the top of your keg to the tap is 2 feet. Gravity will provide x pounds of resistance per foot, so to keep it simple let's say that is 1/foot. So you get 2 from gravity and need 11 more (to match the 13 psi setting on the regulator in this example).
- When you buy beer line, it should tell you what the resistance is. For the sake of this example let's say it is 1.5/foot. You need 11 lbs of resistance, so 11/1.5 = 7.33 feet of tubing. That gives you a total of 13lbs of resistance against the 13 psi you are carbing and pushing with to provide a balanced pour.

Let me know if this makes sense. The ACTUAL resistance should be easy to Google and beer line should give it to you when you look at it - like this stufffrom MoreBeer. (In the description it says it provides 2.2lbs/foot).

The worst thing you get from beer lines that are too long is a slow pour. From lines too short you get foam - which looks like overcarbonated beer which can send you down a rathole of lowering the carb on the beer even though that isn't the problem.

Too much info? Confusing?