Tracing where 11 gallon kegs came from?

[DC]

Hi all, I am looking at the possibility of buying a couple of 11 gallon beer kegs (pub style ones) and was wondering if there is any way of checking which brewery they came from and if they stolen/borrowed or legit ? I have had a quick look on the kegwatch website but it doesnt seem to have any sort of list of colour codes of kegs and which brewery they would belong too. Dont really want to buy stolen kegs if I can help it read about people getting fined for having / stealing them to sell for scrap ! Whats the crack if you have say one or two for personal home brewing and not to sell for scrap and you have bought them thinking they were legit or not knowing they are stolen

Cheers DC

[Graham]

They will all be serial-numbered or batch-numbered (stamped) somewhere. If the number has been ground off or obfuscated it is nicked. If the number is still there you can find out from the breweries' cask clearing-house who it belongs to and whether or not it has been legally sold. Some of the later casks are chipped apparently, though lord knows where they stick the chip. The chip is not really for security purposes, although it serves that purpose also, but is because it is more durable and easier for automated cask-handling equipment to read (for tracking purposes) than the earlier bar-code method of tracking.

[arturobandini]

The chips are a little plastic-type buble on the lid of the keg and as Graham says they're for monitoring keg shipping, refilling, use etc rather than tracking. Any Keg you buy or wish to buy it's worth asking if there are papers for the kegs to say they had bought them from a legit dealer. Anyone who says they bought a Pub and the Kegs were part of the contents is talking nonsense. A lot of big brewers subcontract out their kegs from Trenstar nowadays who deal exclusively with Kegs and don't actually brew anything.

[Waffty]

Here's the colour banding database HERE (link opens an Excel spreadsheet).

It's a volentary 'code' so not everyone will be on there.

Darren.