Cornelius Kegs Used In Beer Brewing
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As you research beer brewing and kegging your home brew, you will see a term used again and again: Cornelieus Keg, also referred to as "corny" kegs. Just what exactly are these?Typically home brewers use smaller kegs than the ones you may be used to seeing. The typical kegs from commercial breweries for use in bars and restaurants are the 15.5 gallon sized kegs. While you can certainly choose to use these, most home brewers instead use the smaller 5 gallon size kegs known as Cornelius Kegs. These kegs offer the home brewer many advantages.First, a typical home brew batch is 5 gallons, so the larger kegs are not necessary. Plus, moving and storing a 5 gallon keg is much more convenient than the larger kegs. If you have a converted chest freezer that you are using for your kegerator, it is nearly impossible to lift a full 15.5 gallon keg in order to drop it in from the top. The smaller kegs allow for you to store a variety of home beers to have on tap. Plus, you can fit more kegs into a smaller kegerator to save on space. You can store up to 3 or 4 corny kegs in a freezer as small as 5.5 to 7 cubic feet. Finally, the corny kegs are much cheaper than the larger ones.Cornelius kegs get their name from the original manufacturer of them, the Cornelius Company originally out of Annoka, Minnesota. The canisters were originally designed for soda companies as a means to distribute their sodas in restaurants. However, in recent years the soda companies have switched to using soda mixes in plastic bags encased in cardboard boxes for restaurant distribution. This has resulted in many Cornelius kegs that are no longer in use. But their loss is the home brewers gain.One advantage of the Cornelius keg is the fact that all the sizes and shapes of the fittings are standardized, so finding replacement parts is easy. Since there are many of them out there, they are perfect to recondition and use for beer brewing purposes. There are other companies that make corny kegs, so finding them isn't too difficult. You can purchase one new, or look around to find one that is used. Chances are that there is a soda distributor in your town, and you can talk with them to see if they have any old cornys available to sell.Corny kegs come with two types of valves, ball lock and pin lock. These locks indicate the type of method used to couple the hose fittings to the valves. It is an important tip to know that the fittings are not interchangeable, so it is best to make sure that when you purchase additional corny kegs that you buy the same type of valves in order to avoid confusion.It isn't a bad idea to start with two kegs. That way, you can always have a back up batch of brew ready to go, and have a constant pipeline of home brew at all times. Of course, as you get sucked into beer brewing, you may find that you want to have several kegs available so you can have a variety of home brews on tap.
