Post
by BeerBloke » Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:27 pm
Hmm, this is quite a complex prospect in my view.
As has been already mentioned a keg with the 2" fitting regardless of size is designed for bright, yeast free, sterile beer. Because of this they can be cleaned 'blind' i.e. they are rinsed, causic'd, rinsed, then sterilised with steam under pressure.
I've originally used kegs form my homebrew over 10 years ago., This was due to me having a 90bbl setup. I had no end of issues with cleaning the kegs to a level that I was sure was 100% Nothing beats the ability to be able to stick your arm in and give something a scrub. As a commercial brewer most of our beers go into cask but it's very rare for a beer to me sat in one for more than say 6 weeks and with a reasonably quick turnaround we get them back before the sh!t sticks. Not always, we have a heap here that will require a long hot caustic soak and a lot of work with the pressure washer to get them clean again.
As we do more and more 'craft keg' here we will be switching to the disposable Petainer kegs at around £8 each purely for simplicity and not having to worry about where they go. Now I know £8 a pop for homebrew adds up to the £60 for a keg pretty soon but from my experience it's a safer option.
It's just a shame Britvic shipped all those cornies to the US back in the 90's I was fortunate to get a load from one of their depots back then.
Now if someone want to fit a sankey fitting to a corny lid, I've seen these in use in Canada, now that might be of use. At least commercially but with a sankey fitting you can't stack the kegs once they're connected as easily as you can with a corny.
What's so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water!
