How to Make a Kettle from a Sankey Keg GETTING KEGS ============ It is illegal to pay a deposit on a keg from a retailer and not return it. It is reported that large breweries have taken people to court to obtain redress for theft of their kegs. The $12 you pay as deposit does not cover the approximate $150 cost of a keg and they do not like to lose money. This information was published in a paper distributed by a company which sells "legal" kegs, so they may be just promulgating the information to promote their sales, but I am sure it is true. What remains to be seen is how aggressively the large breweries pursue obtaining redress. There are at least four sources for legally obtained kegs. Two of these sources obtain kegs have been "retired" by the breweries due to inability to hold pressure. Since the parts which leak are associated with the dispensing/filling mechanism, they are still perfectly good to make a kettle out of. These kegs have their tops cut out and are acid dipped to clean them up. The third source is of course Spartanburg Steel themselves who will be more than happy to sell you a brand new keg for LOTSO BUCKS. One of the used keg sources is SABCO SAV-A-BARREL. Currently, their address is at home, but they are the one who advertise the BrewMagic RIMS system in Zymurgy. Their phone is 419-531-5347. The other supplier is: Bev-Con International 6400 HIghway 51 South Post Office Box 396 Brighton, Te. 38011 (901)476-8000 (800)284-9410 The fourth source is metal scrapyards. Be careful and get a reciept because it is your only way to keep yourself out of trouble, since the kegs in scrap yards have not necessarily been legally obtained. If they have been scrapped by the legal owner, then they are OK, but if someone takes the keg to the scrapyard instead of taking it back for the deposit, then it has been illegally obtained. Your receipt is your only proof that *you* did not steal it. CONVERTING A KEG ================ While both suppliers of used kegs above will do all the metalworking you desire, it will cost you, so I will describe what one might want to do and how to do it. I will assume you have just obtained a used keg which has a gallon or two of beer in it and is still under pressure. This is the worst case and you can leave out any steps which are unnecessary for your situation. When I mention tools which are needed, I will mention the ideal tools to use and why, but give alternatives for people who do not have a complete metal shop avaialable for their use. If you can obtain these tools by borrowing or rental, by all means do so. To substitute the alternative tools will take an incredible amount more work on your part. Stainless Steel is *VERY* hard and not easy to work with hand tools. Pressure Relief --------------- Tools needed are a rag and small socket wrench, about 7/16 is right, but the exact size is not important. Lay the keg on its side on your lawn (or put padding under it if on concrete). Sit on top of the keg with the dispensing port in front of you. Be sure it is not pointing at anything which you would not want sprayed with beer. The keg is laid on its side because the dip tube goes all the way to the bottom and if the keg is less than half full, when the keg is on its side, the dip tube will be in CO2, not beer. Lay the rag over the large ball bearing in the top of the keg. Use the socket wrench to push down on the ball through the rag and hold until all pressure is released. If any beer should happen to make its way into the dip tube, the rag will keep it from spraying you (hopefully). Cutting Out Top --------------- Tools needed are as follows: High speed die grinder with 3" cutoff wheel or drill motor with 1/4" cobalt drill bit to cut original hole. Sawzall with bimetal or carbide blades. High speed right angle die grinder with 36 & 120 grit 3" sanding disks or coarse and fine files. Remove any blades from the Sawzall. Rest the nose of the Sawzall on the top of the keg with the side of the nose right against the top rolled rim of the keg. You will be using this rim as a cutting guide later on. With a heavy duty felt tip pen, make a mark on the keg aligned with where the sawzall blade would penetrate the keg. Make the mark about 1" long, or long enough to accommodate a sawzall blade. This mark will be opened up to allow the blade its first insertion in the keg. With the 3" cutoff wheel, plunge into the keg just inside of the mark you made. Any cutting of Stainless Steel is much easier by abrasives than it is by cutting tools of any kind. If you must use a drill, drill 4 1/4" holes just inside of the mark and open them up to form a slot with a file or hacksaw blade hand held with a pair of gloves or in a blade holder which allows the tip to be free, not attached to a frame. The book "How to Build a Small Home Brewery" (title approximate, author not currently known) recommends carbide blades for the Sawzall. This is probably a good thing, but they are sometimes hard to find. If you can't find them, buy bimetallic blades. You will need approximately 4 blades per keg. Insert the blade in the saw, plunge the blade into the slot you made and push the side of the saw nose up against the rim. Make sure the saw is perfectly upright. Turn on the saw and follow around the rim until you get back to where you started, at which time the top will fall down into the keg. Be aware that due to the curvature of the top of the keg, the saw will want to walk towards the rim and you have to be very careful to keep the saw upright at all times. If you wander from this path, commercially available lids will not cover a misshapen hole completely. The deadly thing for the bimetal blades is that they will heat up and about 1/2" of the teeth on the blade will melt. If you can be patient and just cut a very small bit and then let the blade cool, you can prolong the life of the blade. If you are like me, you will use a lot of blades. If you use a carbide blade, please let me know how it works and how many were needed per keg so that I can add that to this report. Now is the time to smooth the cut edge. This is best accomplished with the right angle die grinder and sanding disks. First use the 36 grit to shape the edge and remove all the grossest burrs and then use a 120 grit disk to smooth all edges. Be careful to not take off excess, because again, you will not be able to use a commercial lid. You are now done if you do not want any fittings in the keg. ADDING FITTINGS TO THE KEG ========================== You may want to add a valve to the bottom of the keg, or even a fitting into which you can screw a thermometer. While it is possible to silver solder stainless steel, this is not advisable. The best way to secure a fitting into the keg is to have it MIG or TIG welded. I cannot stress this point enough - it is worth the $$ to get it done right!!!!!!!! The reason is a follows. If stainless steel is heated and left hot for any length of time, it becomes brittle, in fact so brittle, that tapping it with a hammer can cause it to shatter. With MIG or TIG welding, the heat is confined to a small area and is intense and of short duration. I know all of this from experience because I ruined a keg trying to silver solder it and had a chunk about 3/8" square just fall out of the side of the keg. To add a valve for a sparge boiler or to rack your wort from a wort boiler, I suggest an 1/2" couplingbe welded into the side of the keg just above the weld line where the bottom rim is attached to the keg. Start by drilling a 1/4" hole and work up to larger drills until you have a 1" hole. This is just a teeny bit too small so you will need to use a carbide burr (or file) to enlarge it slightly until the coupling just slips in. Weld it in so that the coupling is flush with the inside wall of the keg. In this manner, you can add any type of fitting you want on the inside. Attach ball valve to outside with close nipple. To add any other type of fittings, like for a thermometer, I suggest using another coupling just like for the valve. One caution about placement of fittings and such. There are generally 4 holes in the bottom rim to allow liquid to drain out when the keg is upside down. When you have a burner going under the keg, these openings shoot out flame for several inches. First, do not place any of your fittings directly over one of these holes, and second, orient your fittings so that none of these holes point at anything flammable. I have welded some small pieces of stainless steel into the holes on my kegs to prevent the gouts of flame. NIFTY DRAIN AND HOPSCREEN ========================= To the inside of the coupling, use an elbow - 1/2" MNPT to 1/2" compression fitting (I prefer SS of course). Screw it in so that the compression fitting points at a 30 degree angle down from the horizontal. Take an 8" length of 1/2" tubing and bend it in a shallow arc. Insert into the compression fitting and tighten down. Move things around until the end of the tubing just about touches the seam where the side of the keg was welded onto the rounded bottom. Slip an EasyMasher (TM) style screen over it a couple of inches and secure with a hose clamp. The beauty of this placement is that if you ever lose siphon because the only wort that is in the bottom of the kettle is pretty well mixed with hops, just tilt the keg forward and to the side and the outlet becomes the LOWEST point in the keg. Hold it there until all the wort drains out of those hops. The best screen I have found for this is 12 mesh SS. WIREBRUSH WARNING ================= If you use a wire brush, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use a steel brush on SS. You will embed steel particles in the SS surface and cause it to begin to rust. The only way to correct this after you have done it is to get the SS passivated (dipped and soaked in nitric acid).