Pressure Barrels - More than you wanted to know!

[CD]

Maybe the cold made it a bit brittle, was it touching part of the fridge that gets very cold? I guess the tap keeps it away but was it close?

No it wasn't, and it has not been cold in the balmy West Country.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Looking at the area around the crack the plastic does look quite hard and maybe brittle. I’d guess at some point the keg has had a knock or the constant flexing under temperature and pressure has eventually proved too much for it. The crack is emerging from a groove that might focus the flexing forces right where the crack has appeared. In any event I think this keg is a right-off sadly.

 

[CD]

Add pinhole leaks in the body that squirted a tiny jet of beer, cracks along the seams in different places, cracks at the bottom away from the seam, cracks in the cap, caps that don't pull down on the gasket properly because the thread is too coarse (Hamilton Bard), let alone leaks from the any of the gaskets.
In short not fit for purpose, but they have really been that way since the 1980s when the first ones came on the scene, since the design is the same, and I found that out the hard way like others.

Yep, had all those too. PBs were around in the seventies to the same design, but not translucent if I remember correctly. My experience is that the newer they are, the worse they are, and have all the hallmarks of being Made in China. I have four 3+ gallon capacity ones that must be over 15 years old, and have never had an issue with. Typically they are no longer produced.

 

[CD]

Looking at the area around the crack the plastic does look quite hard and maybe brittle. I’d guess at some point the keg has had a knock or the constant flexing under temperature and pressure has eventually proved too much for it. The crack is emerging from a groove that might focus the flexing forces right where the crack has appeared. In any event I think this keg is a right-off sadly.

It's already got 'Scrap' written on it. Fingers crossed the duct/duck tape holds.

 

[CD]

Maybe the cold made it a bit brittle, was it touching part of the fridge that gets very cold? I guess the tap keeps it away but was it close?

Sorry , I mis-read your comment. The only bits cold are the copper pipes containing cold water at around 7C and it was inches away from them.

 

[kelper]

Sorry , I mis-read your comment. The only bits cold are the copper pipes containing cold water at around 7C and it was inches away from them.

I hope your KingKegs don't fail.

 

[CD]

I hope your KingKegs don't fail.

Haven't got any.

 

[Nidger]

View attachment 33512

I thought I knew every dirty trick that cheap and cheerful pressure barrels could play, but this is a new one. Alerted to a problem by a trickle of beer coming out of the drain on my ancient chest freezer beer store, I tracked it down to a hairline crack on the centreline at the bottom of the circle. Seepage stopped when I dropped the internal pressure from 5 psi to zero, and as this particular cask was due to be used next, stuck a bit of ubiquitous Gaffer tape over the crack and connected up my mini hand pump and Noddy foil balloon air excluder. (See my thread ‘Draught beer’ if that is gibberish to you.)

Yet another scrapped PB, but not a financial disaster as it was one of a pair my assistant brewer produced from somewhere for free. There is a saying I learnt from my Dad which goes: “In this world there is always a man prepared to make things a little cheaper and a little worse, and those who buy on price alone are that man’s lawful prey”. I suppose I should have standardised on King Kegs, but five of them won’t fit in my beer store.

I'd be getting my soldering iron out and a piece of old polypropylene and weld it

 

[terrym]

I'd be getting my soldering iron out and a piece of old polypropylene and weld it

Tried that. It didn't work for me. And they are HDPE.

 

[Nidger]

Tried that. It didn't work for me. And they are HDPE.

Reading about all the trouble with PB's I'll be interested to see how my old boots one holds out
The cracked lid on my FB wasn't too bad with a cut square of old plastic and a hot glue gun lol.
Temporary until i buy new.
Although obviously not under anywhere near as much pressure.
I'll take what you said and bin mine if it fails.

 

[terrym]

I'll take what you said and bin mine if it fails.

I may have said in the past that one of the best things going for PBs is that they can be recycled

 

[Clint]

Barrelist!!

 

[Tanglefoot]

Reading about all the trouble with PB's I'll be interested to see how my old boots one holds out



View attachment 33539

I'm still using the Boots barrels I bought some 25 yrs ago, if that gives you any confidence.

 

[CD]

This is the state of play last night. Far PB on ledge is HC3 (Home Consumption), the troublemaker. The tape covering the leak was still holding, but the contents have the clarity of ditch water – which isn’t surprising considering it was shaken about and the cap loosened.

The PB without a top is HC2 having the last couple of pints of pure nectar carefully drawn off by using 2 half pint glasses, each half-filled at a time and tipped into a pint glass, so when the dregs come over the most lost is only ¼ of a pint.

Next is the reserve bottles, two of which I will be drinking tonight, one of those everlasting 3+ PBs which is going elsewhere, and HC4 whose green dot reminds me it has not been fined.

Thanks for all the comments received. I may well give the soldering iron treatment a go later as it seems in good condition otherwise. Forgive me if I’ve said this before (an age related phenomenon) but I consider my PBs as better the cheap devils I know that lets me see how much beer I have left, to the expensive cornys I don’t that don’t.

 

[Buffers brewery]

Forgive me if I’ve said this before (an age related phenomenon)

Don’t worry, there are others here that say the same thing repeatedly about pressure barrels too!

 

[afur]

One noob question. How do you know it's holding pressure. Is it as simple as spraying it with fairy liquid solution?

I got given a couple of King kegs, I've half filled one with water and added a couple of squirts of gas with no obvious signs of leakage. I have a brew in the fermenter just now and would like to keg it but SWMBO would be seriously unhappy with a major leak as its in the cupboard at the moment (this will be my warm place until I can a fridge set up in shed).

 

[kelper]

One noob question. How do you know it's holding pressure. Is it as simple as spraying it with fairy liquid solution?

Fill the PB 99% with water and add gas. You will know much sooner if it is losing pressure.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

How do you know it's holding pressure. Is it as simple as spraying it with fairy liquid solution?

I normally do the fairy liquid thing; but sometimes it's hard to tell, when the leak is very slow.
Last week I wanted a bit more reassurance so I pressurised the BeerSphere (at least 30yrs old) that I've recently done a 'corny' conversion on, and dunked it head down in the bath. There was no hiding place for the very slow tell-tale bubbles: they were actually coming from around the big O ring at the top. Tightening that down by quarter of turn fixed it

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Fill the PB 99% with water and add gas. You will know much sooner if it is losing pressure.

Raises an interesting point: I do read fairly often about people saying the pressure has gone down "because the CO2 has dissolved into the water (/beer)". My instinct is that even if the gas dissolves into the liquid, the vapour pressure will remain the same - but I'm not sure enough to state it as gospel... any thoughts?

 

[kelper]

The pressure will drop as CO2 dissolves. If you can make the connections, you could pressurise a 100% filled PB from the tap and then close it off. But you would need a pressure gauge. This is how we test marine boilers at 60bar (900 psi) although we need a high-pressure pump, not the tap!