Ever since I first made a batch of home brew about 10 years ago, I had always dreamed of the day I could put it in a keg. Up until recently it was kind of a pipe dream without much thought being given to it. Recently when I started making home brew again with my buddy Chris we looked into it a bit more. Here in North America people are kegging their home brew beer using old soft drink or "soda" kegs called Cornelius Kegs. They hold about 21L if fluid which makes them easy to carry around empty or full.
Anyway Chris and I had a conversation a few times about how awesome it would be to keg our brews, he contacted a few old hospitality friends to see what he could find. A few days later Chris shows up at my house with 2 Corny kegs! Score.. apparently he found some bloke here in Calgary that has a bunch of them and if you can get hold of his number, he is willing to sell them. So we had the kegs, now we needed some way to pump c02 INTO the kegs.. this prooved a bit tricky.
Over the next few weeks / month we enquired with a bunch of different places about purchasing a c02 tank all to no avail. One Saturday afternoon while walking the dogs we came across a garage sale about 2 blocks from home. Lee suggested we should go in and look, so we went and and wondered around. Lee came up to me and said, "Hey I want that trunk over there, by the way is that a c02 tank next to it that you have been looking for?" As it so happens, it WAS a c02 tank and the guy did want to get rid of it. $50 later we scored a trunk and a c02 tank.
Once we had the tank, we need it filled up, The guy I bought it from suggested I go to a paint ball shop up on the corner of Edmonton Trail and TransCanada. Sadly they did not fill tanks as large as the one I scored (5kgs). I ended up finding a place called the Recharge Station, our near Blackfoot Casino. I drove out there and for $30 they filled up the tank for me on the spot.
Fast forward to yesterday. We put our partial grain amber ale into the keg, pumped in 15psi of c02, now it is just a matter of waiting 10 days then the beer will flow free :).
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