Cornelius Keg Pressure Pot

[ToddK]

The soda industry abandoned Corney kegs wholesale a few years back, surplusing tens of thousands of them so you can buy new ones for a fraction of their original cost, and used ones for hardly anything. While homebrewing shops have them pretty cheap you can usually find them for even less on ebay, but its worth checking local scrap yards first since they often will turn up in their SS pile where they can be had for a few pennies a lb. I keep thinking I should stock up on them since they have so many uses and one of these days the glut will end and they will shoot up in price.

I got the idea from a book on building your own divelights.

Using a C02 rig to test divelights seems an unecessary complication. I often use just a bicycle pump on mine, when I am testing with it full of water, and a shop compressor or even one of those little 12V tire pumps works fine too. Using leftover scuba air isn't a bad idea but you want to be sure you have some overpressure protection on somewhere between the tank and the keg since 3000 psi could blow it apart (the kegs usually have it already) creating a shrapnel risk in the process. I have an old low pressure two gauge regulator from a shop compressor attached to the LP port of an old scuba 1st stage which I sometimes use to pressurize the test pot, and also to fill tires, clean computers (scuba air is super clean and dry, great for blowing dust out of electronics) and other jobs where I need portable or very clean dry air.

Yeah, I agree. I needed a test vessel quickly, and was unsure of what the connections into and out of the keg were like.

 

[fstbttms]

are those magnets holding up your CO2 manifold? if so, how do they work?

They are magnets, magnets with cup hooks on them. Got 'em at Ace Hardware.

 

[no excuses]

are you using the pin lock or ball lock kegs?

 

[fstbttms]

are you using the pin lock or ball lock kegs?

Look at the pix. He's using ball-lock kegs.

 

[ToddK]

Yeah, it is a ball lock keg. The thing that sold me was that this style comes with a pull ring overpressure relief valve, where the pin locks come with a fuse type relief (according to cornykegs.com).

"The second thing you will find is that the Pepsi style Cornelius Kegs typically have a pull ring relief valve in the center of the lid while the coke style Cornelius Kegs have a “fuse” type relief valve. In the case of the Coke style Cornelius Keg most people just depress the gas side post to relieve pressure from the keg."

 

[fstbttms]

Maybe you are already know this, but avoid mixing posts and connectors. If you put the gas-in connector on the bev-out post or the bev-out connector on the gas-in post, you will find they are very difficult to remove. So much so that you may have to break them to get them off.

Regarding the post themselves, learn how to identify them so you don't put them back on the wrong side of the keg, if you ever remove them. The gas-in post will frequently have a 12-point "star" base. The bev-out post will have a 6-sided base. In the occasional case where the gas-in post does not have a 12-point base, it will have a groove milled across the points in the base.

 

[CuNanoTube]

My set-up is either a 2 or 5 L titanium autoclave, capable of 400 or so PSI (no oxygen) or a 20 or 50 L stainless steel autoclave, capable of 255 PSI.
My summer job was at a lab / pilot plant that does a lot of autoclave work, I have connections there.