Breweries that fill 5 gallon cornies?

[atomicpunk]

All of those beers are surely attainable in Philly, but...

Stoudt's is good, but over an hour away.
Flying Fish is garbage (IMO of course).
Nodding Head is OK (work down the street), but their brewer was weird and kinda rude the one time I tried to talk to him.
DFH is one of my favs, but it's over 2 hours away (the reason I gave the 2 hour radius)
Weyerbacher is solid, but 1.5 hours away.
General Laf is decent and close.

Correct me if I'm wrong as I've never gotten a corny filled at a brewery, but for a brewery to fill a corny at a reasonal price it would either have to be a small brewery or have a very nice/approachable brewer, no? I feel like all of the above except General Laf would be too big to have time for a homebrewer.

BTW, where are you from atomic?

I was just responding to you saying no good beer in the Philly area. I don't think any of them would fill a corny for you. The General used to sell their beer by the corny but not anymore.

Work in CC, live in Plymouth Meeting, just down the road from the General.

[KidHop]

Seems to me Victory and Iron Hill need some mention as well. And Sly Fox has gotten really good the past couple years.

[OldTree]

Correct me if I'm wrong as I've never gotten a corny filled at a brewery, but for a brewery to fill a corny at a reasonal price it would either have to be a small brewery or have a very nice/approachable brewer, no? I feel like all of the above except General Laf would be too big to have time for a homebrewer.

]

I think you are pretty much on track here. I work at a brewpub where we also sell keg beer. Normally we are selling beer in sankes, but we also fill cornies for those that bring them in. For us, the amount of effort to fill a corny is basically the same as filling a sanke keg...it just takes different fittings (which we have).

When bringing in a corny though, there a couple of things to make sure you do.
1) Have the corny cleaned and sanitized. Obvious, but still needs to be pointed out.
2) Have the corny under CO2 pressure. The brewery is putting carbonated beer into your corny, so essentially we need to counter-pressure fill it. Without the back pressure in the corny, CO2 will break out and you will end up with flattened beer.

Ultimately, with cornies you are taking more of the keg prep duties upon yourself. If you are on top of your game, then the beer you get from your local will be just as the brewer intended it to be. Otherwise, who knows what will happen...

Cheers,
Augie

Oh yeah...feel free to replace cornies with hummers and/or scotties in the above dissertation

[atomicpunk]

Seems to me Victory and Iron Hill need some mention as well. And Sly Fox has gotten really good the past couple years.

Excellent tag line.