by rwh » Monday Jul 28, 2008 12:56 pm
It's actually possible to legally acquire this style of keg, though I believe that Lion Nathan and CUB don't ever release any of theirs, some other breweries do. The key is to find one that has had the brewery's name stamped out as this indicates it's legally resellable.
What you need in order to use it is a keg coupler. This allows you to attach gas and beer lines to the keg though the ball valve thing at the top. Cleaning is done chemically, using oxyper or similar oxygen based bleach. You can do this by pumping it in from another keg using CO2 to do the pumping. Then drain and rinse. A good soak of this should get virtually anything out of the keg and sanitise it at the same time.
If you're not satisfied with pumping, it's actually possible to remove the "spear" from the middle and refill/clean through the resulting hole. It's relatively fiddly though. There are instructions on AHB somewhere from memory.
w00t!