steelreign wrote:I am seriously thinking about starting to keg 10 gallon batches in 15.5g Sanke's.... is there anyone on here that has experience and/or advice to kind of speed up the learning curve?
Yes, I keg in half (15.5) and quarter (7.75 gal) kegs. There are also "sixtels" which hold just a little over 5 gal.
I think Sankey is great mainly because the fittings you need to set them up are the same as are used in commercial practice and are thus available from any home or commercial bar supply source. There will never be a situation where you need a Type II corny gas connecter only to find that all you have is a pin lock. Also you can take them anywhere and they will plug in. And they don't leak gas around the large O-ring.
The disadvantage is that it's a bit harder to fill and clean them. You wan't to fill against CO2 counter pressure. Of course you want to fill Cornies against CO2 counter pressure but lots of people don't bother with that so I suppose you needn't to either. Whether you fill against counter pressure or not you will need a coupler just for filling (and cleaning). The couplers have a "pea" in them which prevents anything from flowing into the keg and of course that isn't conducive to filling so the pea has to be removed. Just pull out the little plastic pea retainer with a pair of needle nose and the ball falls right out. You can save these and replace them if you ever want to put the coupler back into regular dispensing service.
There is also a check valve in the coupler's gas port which is designed to prevent gas from escaping the keg. You will also want to remove that. Just take off the gas beer nut and lift the check valve (usually a rubber insert of some sort) out of the port. You now have a coupler that will pass either liquid or gas through either port in either direction and this can lead to undesirable situations so I suggest you go to Micromatic (or some other distributor of draft equipment) and buy a couple of the shut-off valves they have which screw right onto the gas and liquid ports on the coupler and have threads which take standard gas and liquid tail-pieces and beer nuts.
To fill: pump or let gravity drain sanitizer into the keg. Slosh around, drain or pump it out. If no rinse procede to filling, if rinsing is desired repeat the process with boiled (sterile) water. Now fill as you would a Corny keg i.e. pump, push (with CO2) or let gravity drain in beer while the gas valve is open to let the gas inside the keg displaced by the beer escape.
To counterpressure fill make sure the keg is absolutely full of sanitizer or rinse water if a rinse step is being used. Use CO2 to push all this liquid out. Because the spear doesn't go quite to the bottom the keg should be inverted for this and the liquid drained through the gas port. Use pressure that is a bit above the pressure under which your beer is being stored. If this is atomospheric (i.e. you are going to fill by gravity) use just enough to push the sanitizer or water out.
When all the liquid is drained, shut off the gas port and let CO3 flow in until the desired pressure is reached then shut off the liquid port. Set the keg upright, connect the beer source to the spear, let the beer run and bleed gas from the gas port. If you are filling from a pressurized source (i.e. pushing the beer into the keg from a sealed unitank) a bleeding apparatus consisting of a "tee" with gas line on one leg, pressure gauge on the second and a needle valve on the 3rd, is indispensible. Open the neddle valve incrementally while watching the pressure gauge and as soon as it reads below the fermenter pressure open the beer valve. Beer will enter at a rate you can control by opening and closing the needle valve.
I doubt this will be of much use to you but the way I actually do it is to invert the keg on a stand, push live (culinary) steam up the spear and drain condensate out the gas port. After 15 min. I shut off the valves, set the keg upright, quickly remove the steam coupler and connect another coupler hooked to a CO2 bottle. As the steam condenses it is replaced by CO2. The keg is always at positive pressure so no air whatsoever gets in (assumption is made that 15 minutes steam flow displaces all the air originally in there and the fact that I can drink beer from these kegs for more than a year convinces me that's a good assumption). The condensed steam is blown out the gas port (keg inverted again for this purpose). If you do have steam available there are obviously lots of potential hazards to doing it this way even with low pressure steam. Wear face protection, gloves etc.
To be sure the keg is full fill it on a scale or if one is not available look for the condensation limit on the side (assumes cold beer and humid room) or place your hand on the side. The keg will feel cool, them warm as the the heat from your hand warms it up. It will continue to feel warm until the beer level reaches your hand. The beer will conduct heat away and the metal feels cool again. When close to full you can use the same trick on the dome. When the dome starts to feel cool you are pretty full. Close the needle valve and then the beer valve.
steelreign wrote:I found a site that sells a conversion kit for getting the spear and ball lock out. I need to know what everyone else that has tried this or is currently trying this is doing? Thanks!
There is a tool for removing spears. It's built like a gear puller except that it's designed to put pressure on the spear, thus compressing the spring, so that you can easily remove the retaining ring and thus the spear, most of which seem to be "drop in" but there may be some screw in ones still around. Safety note: be sure keg is depressurized before removing spear. The spear can be further disassembled. Drill the appropriate sized hole in a 2x4 and screw three wood screws around the periphery of the hold to match the slots on the spear (120 ° apart). Insert the spear through the hole, press and rotate and the spring retainer is loose.
Spears can be removed using any technique to get the pressure off the retaining ring. One guy I know used a 2x4 lever through one of the chine hand holes to depress a golf ball (I think it is). The tool I mentioned above is a bit pricey.
Once the spear is out some say they can adequately clean the keg with a carboy brush. But you don't want to have to take the spear out each time you need to clean the keg. The alternative is to shoot cleaner up the spear with a hefty pump and feed what drains down the sides back into the pump inlet via some sort of reservoir. I put together a rig with a 2 HP centrifugal pump, check valve, T and air inlet:
http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/109220058. The stand was put together from perforated angle obtained at the Home Depot. The compressed air is used to blow out the cleaner, rinse water, acid.
WRT with the latter: beerstone will eventually become a problem if you don't take steps to remove it which is done by shooting acid (or an acid based product designed to remove beerston) into the keg every third or so cleaning.
