Kegging with old brewery kegs

[The Brown Hornet]

Greetings Ladies and Gents

I've come to that point in the road where bottling is just to much of a pain in the backside and want to go down the keg path to homebrewing enlightenment. We're currently going through about 80 bottles a week and kegging seems the loggical way to less work overall.

I'm in the position that I can get my hands on some old 50l (ten gallon) kegs and associated paraphenalia and am hoping that this can prove a viable means of kegging my beer.

Can anyone enlighten me on how to get into these kegs so they can be properly cleaned, sterilised and filled with amber nectar of the gods, and also if this is actually a viable way to keg homebrew.

Thanks in advance, Cheers

The Brown Hornet

[gregb]

How many of you are getting through 80 bottles a week?

Greg

[The Brown Hornet]

There's four of us at any one time plus or minus the odd blow in, and we've been a bit social lately having people around.

Things are a bit crook at the moment, we're drinking it faster than we can brew. We've got three fermentors going at all times, but with Kalgoorlie (I work away from Perth where i live, just in case my profile counfuses anyone) winter weather being what it is, each brew is taking 12 - 14 days to complete fermentation. Consumption over the next few weeks will probably fall dramatically because we'll have to go out and buy production stuff.

We're looking to go to kegging so we don't have to wash so many bottles, and also we don't have to wait for secondary fermentation.

Cheers

[The Brown Hornet]

Thanks to all who took the time to read this.

We've worked it out with a healthy dose of trial and error.

For anyone that wants to know you need to disconnect the spear from the neck of the keg before you can remove any of it from the keg.
A simply job with a pair of multigrips and a slight twist and the two come apart and you can then get everything out.

Cheers

[bouncingcastle]

Just a quick note - this is for the tooheys kegs only
CUB ones are different. and a PITA.

Cheers and beers.