Building And Using Garden Sprayer Party Kegs

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Thirsty Boy

ICB - tight shorts and poor attitude. **** yeah!
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A Guide to Making and Using Cheap Pressure Sprayer Party Kegs

Everyone loves a party keg!! It just makes you feel great when you bung down your eski at a BBQ; and instead of pulling out a stubbie of insipid macro lager like everyone else, you pull out a tap and pour yourself a frothy glass of your finest hand made beer. Who wouldnt want to be able to do that? Certainly not me..

But those little 9-12 liter stainless kegs are expensive, bloody expensive. Too much for me to justify the expense! So whats a homebrewer to do? Build one out of completely unrelated objects, for next to nothing of course! And thats just what I did.

After seeing a bunch of other peoples ideas and designs, I fashioned a standard plastic garden pressure sprayer into a perfectly functional 6L party keg. It worked a treat. At a later date I showed my toy to a fellow AHB member (Spillsmostofit) and he decided he would build one too. Spills improved on my design considerably, and when he was done, he had come up with an elegant, effective and versatile party keg or small keg replacement system.

We thought the thing was a solid and economical enough design that it could and should be shared with a wider audience; so we ran a Party Keg Building Workshop at Grain and Grape here in Melbourne. It was a pretty successful day and 15 punters went home with finished party kegs. But of course a lot of AHB members dont live in Melbourne, or couldnt make it on the day, so we got a lot of requests for a written guide on how to build and use one of these little beauties. And finally, here it is.

It will be split into two attachments in pdf format. One describing how to make the kegs, the other describing the various different ways the kegs can be used. I will try to include links to other information that might be useful as well.

Of course, this isnt the only way to go about building a party keg system, but its the way Spills and I do it and it works. After reading the guides and spending a bit of time in your workshop, you too could have a versatile party keg set-up like this one.

PartyKeg003a.jpg



This is the Guide to Building a party Keg

View attachment Keg_Construction.pdf

This is the guide to Using the party Keg

View attachment Using_your_Party_Keg.pdf

This will be very useful to you

View attachment brewing_reckoner.pdf

Also check out the articles in the Article section on Balancing a Keg System and Kegging for Beginners

Happy Building and Drinking



Thirsty
 
That is deadset the coolest thing i've ever seen. Bless your souls for coming up with that.
 
Enjoying a Helles from my version of this little number. Mine's even a bit lower-tech than this setup. No reg, just squirt CO2 from the SS when the pour gets a little weak. Works a treat, though, and beats the sheee-it out of bottling! (Details on the other party keg thread, if anyone's interested.)
 

X2! I've been hanging for this thread since I heard about your G&G day. Thanks Thirsty, I'm sure I could've worked out something similar but you've saved me a lot of wasted time with trial and error!

Wooo000000ooT!!!111!!111!!!
 
Excellent work ThistyBoy I'm now rockin n rollin.

Thanks again
 
Great job Thirsty, certainly looks great. I have been thinking about setting one of these up for a while, this will make it a bit easier.

Thanks
 
I am getting one on the go next week for ales so perfect timing on the post.
 
Brilliant post. A lot of work went into that !! Much appreciated.

I was in bunnings last week and they had these on pallets at $8.90 each, (6l ones - couldn't fin dteh bigger ones) - so good time to buy !!
 
This is what I love about this web site.....the idea/invention sharing is bloody marvellous. Nice work Thirsty.
Cheers
Steve
 
Crap... for some reason I dont seem to be able to edit this post anymore, I was going to do a little tidying and then later tonight install the second articel... no love unfortunately... I'll see if I can sort it out with a moderator.

Bugger

Thirsty
 
Awesome stuff, thanks guys! Dashed out to Bunnings at lunch time to grab mine :D . Project on!!!!!
 
I saw 20L back-pack spray units at the hardware store the other day. Imagine cruising round with 20L of nectar strapped to your back, and a beer-gun in your hand! Only problem would be keeping it cold although maybe some insulation, and a little ice-compartment prior to the hose........deadly!
 
I saw 20L back-pack spray units at the hardware store the other day. Imagine cruising round with 20L of nectar strapped to your back, and a beer-gun in your hand! Only problem would be keeping it cold although maybe some insulation, and a little ice-compartment prior to the hose........deadly!


Home Brew OH&S issue! Bend the knees and the elbow - not the back... B)
 
Awesome stuff, thanks guys! Dashed out to Bunnings at lunch time to grab mine :D . Project on!!!!!

may grab one tomorrow. getting even more excited about this than actually getting into kegging in the first place.


Imagine cruising round with 20L of nectar strapped to your back, and a beer-gun in your hand!

not to mention the back aches, ouch!! but they'd be worth it.
 
BTW...

I noticed that Aldi has the correct type of sprayer in teh 8L version for I think $14 or thereabouts.
 
Here is the promised guide to Using the Party Kegs.. it covers all the options for dispensing, gas, filling and carbonating.

I will be asking the admins to insert this into the first post in the appropriate spot, but here it is at any rate.


(see first post)

Happy Kegging

Thirsty
 
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