Fell off the brewing slippery slope

Darren Wright

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In a by chance conversation with an old co-worker, at lunch a few weeks back, I mentioned I was wanting to try brewing some beer. He mentioned that he had a Kegerator and some kegs I could have if I wanted them. He and his wife don't drink, but they used to own a KOA camp ground for a few years and he brewed root beer for the patrons there, it just sits in his basement now. He sent me pics and says he has 10 kegs to go with the setup, just needs a co2 tank. I'm picking it up this weekend.
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After some nudging I got him to charge me $200 for all of it though, I felt bad just taking it as none of this stuff is cheap. I know the kegerator new alone was about $600.

After lots of questions to another member here, I think I've got a vague grip on things I'll need for brewing. I ordered this kit last night and some cleaners for the equipment. I'll wait until I get the equipment to order new o-rings, lines, and an additional tap or two. As long as there is some hard cider flowing from one off the taps, my wife will allow it to adorn the sunroom downstairs...at least the kegerator.
 
Couple of things.

First since that keg system had root beer running through it you will want to replace every (and I do mean every!) piece of rubber or plastic in the system or everything you put through it will taste like root beer (not in a good way). For the kegs that means new poppit valves, o rings (lid and tubes), pressure release valves (shop around for these, the process vary quite a bit and they aren't super cheap). Since you're returning 10 kegs you might do as well/better getting the gaskets from an industrial supply.. I used to have the mcmaster part #'s, and will see if i can dig them up (might still require to large of a buy, can't remember). For the tap on the kegerator replace the hose and corney connector with new. Since you plan to run cider through it you should also replace the shank assembly (that goes through the tower) and the tap itself with stainless. Cider will eat the chrome taps that come with this like candy (this might already have been done since soda eats them fairly bad as well but I wouldn't count on it). I'd also highly recommend replacing the tap itself with a "forward seal" tap, they get less gunky, have less contamination problems, and don't stick like the old rear seal ones do.

If you can boiling outside is conducive to domestic harmony... I brewed on a stove for years but boil overs are.. Well to common and painful to clean up.

Finally Welcome aboard the brewer train ! :thumb: If you have any additional Q's would be happy to help!
 
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+1 on brewing outside. Nothing like being able to just hose the down the floor if you spill something or make a mess.
 
But beer cookies...them are the best!

I think you confused cookies with cheese, but we'll forgive you :D

Also meant to mention that the capper in that kit will make you sad (but all the cappers in kits would make you sad so.. this one is no different). If you get to a stage in your life where cleaning lots of bottles sounds like fun (I'll have what he's getting) you might want to invest in a slightly better capper. Likely not a huge problem since you're going to mostly keg anyway and for small numbers of bottles that capper is just mildly annoying instead of outright insanity inducing (which it would be for large amounts of bottles). Pretty much any of the overarm cappers work reasonably well. I mention this because if you do end up bottling and start to wonder if there is some magic to not breaking bottles and having half applied caps.. well .. yep there is... a new capper :D

And really yes you should feel bad about that price! Straight up highway robbery! :thumb:
 
For you guys that brew outside, can it be do on a turkey fryer or something like that? I'd like to try brewing, but so far have been intimidated by the equipment needed.
 
For you guys that brew outside, can it be do on a turkey fryer or something like that? I'd like to try brewing, but so far have been intimidated by the equipment needed.

Yep - I have a surplus of equipment because I keep accumulating it as others leave the hobby :rolleyes: but brewed for quite a while with a stainless turkey fryer pot that we found on sale. I wouldn't use less than a 65k BTU burner for a full sized (> 5g) pot (I have two 65ks, and a 150k btu - the 150k works well with a converted keg, the 65k's work well with the thinner turkey fryer style pots but can't easily overcome the thermal mass of the keg. I also have a 40k btu burner but it won't heat anyof them very well). At this point I mostly use the turkey pots and 65k btu burners to heat extra water (my brew setup is overly complicated so don't worry about that :D).

There isn't actually all that much equipment needed, come on in the waters fine!
 
I picked up the kegerator and kegs (10 of them) this afternoon, tried to offer a little more cash, he wouldn't take it.
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He had a nice little cache of things to go with them. He was setting up to sell root beer at their campground, so two regulators, had a line setup for carbonating several bottles at once, gave me the extra quick connectors for the tap side, keg o-rings, a Sankey tap (for taps at the liquor store), a tap cleaning kit, a temp controller for setting a freezer to a warmer temp for storage of kegs, and a bunch of cleaners.
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I have some supplies coming later this week to give my first batch a try, a red ale. Also may pickup some supplies to do some hard cider.
 
Wow. I think you are gonna have some good fun. The gear looks like it was well taken care of, so hopefully you won't have too much trouble getting to work the way you want it.
 
All looks nice and clean :thumb: Shouldn't be to bad getting it all setup to use.

If you didn't get one a tap wrench is worth the $6-7 to get to make removing the tap easier.. Although I'm betting there is one in with all the cleaning supplies.
 
Thanks all!

Taking reservations for family visits? :rolleyes:
Always...might want to wait a few batches though. ;)

If you didn't get one a tap wrench is worth the $6-7 to get to make removing the tap easier.. Although I'm betting there is one in with all the cleaning supplies.
Yup, one is in the cleaning kit. Looks like the gas side of the kegs takes a 12 point socket. Is that correct or is it a special socket?



I know...I tried throwing more money at him, but he wasn't having it.
 
Yup, one is in the cleaning kit. Looks like the gas side of the kegs takes a 12 point socket. Is that correct or is it a special socket?

From the pic it looks like they're all ball lock right? If so then yes that'll work, although you need a deep socket. I prefer a small craftsman open socket wrench that has 11/16 on one side and 7/8 on the other. That'll remove any of the ball lock connectors, some come in either size depending.. It fits nicely in the tackle box I use to store all this stuff and is one of those cases where a tool allocated just for that purpose made sense to me (wasn't any more expensive than one decent deep socket either).

Pin lock either needs a special tool, or you need to dremel a deep socket to make a special tool (which is what most people do)

Here's a pic in case my description is wrong/lacking

Edit: craftsman part # 43365

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Also for giggles a shot of my "brewers boyscout kit" which makes me rather popular at homebrew gatherings when someone is missing a fitting or gasket leaks or whatever :D
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WHAT A FIND! Good job! I think that you will love brewing. There is so much to learn about brewing a perfect beer but so fun learning it. we (my wife and I) love to brew. I am making a EHERMS system right now so i can get away from extract brewing. and about the root beer taste YES replace the hoses! wow at the end of my Barley Wine keg it had a root beer taste to it now I know why thanks Ryan! But if you can Boil Water you can Brew Beer. Happy Brewing. Mondays Brew day here is a Stout and a Imperial IPA. yes dad I said a Stout and a Imperial IPA
 
Jim, got any details on your EHERMS? Maybe start a build thread, unless you have it documented somewhere? Would love to see what you have going on there. I've been procrastinating about a system upgrade for about five years (2 gott coolers and as microphone!)

Also not just the hoses, all gaskets, etc on the keg. Basically anything rubber or plastic and not just straight up stainless (the handle on the outside excepted :D)

My razed earth policy on old root beer kegs started when I had made this fantastic Munich helles (which is a rather hard beer to get just so, this was the first I'd ever made that was just so) and it kept getting rootbeerier and rootbeerier and blech!! So terrible and sad. I still make root beer (from.. well mostly roots :p) but make it as a syrup concentrate and just add it to plain soda water (more flexible anyway since now I can do two or three sodas and adult sodas as well from the same leg). Commercial rootbeer/extract is actually worse, the issue with it is that it contains wintergreen oil (somewhat to replace the safrole character since sassafras is banned) and the wintergreen oil penetrates rubber and plastic and is impossible to remove. I actually know of one case where a pub had beer lines running adjacent to a root beer line and just being alongside was enough for the beer to end up flavored.
 
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