If you decide to use corny kegs (and that’s a good choice) you will obviously need the keg(s) but also some other bits.
You don’t need to worry about carbonating drops or priming sugar for carbonating your beer in a corny keg, you’ll use CO2 gas for that so let’s start there.
You need a supply of CO2. This is normally obtained from a bottled gas supply company - I use Adams Gas. You pay a one-off deposit (around £50) for the bottle and then pay for the gas (around £20 for 6Kg which will last many months).
You need a primary gas regulator to regulate the pressure coming out of the bottle. The pressure in the bottle is around 500psi but you won’t be putting anything like that in your corny - this is more likely to be in the range 10psi to 30psi. The primary regulator fits directly to the gas bottle and has two gauges; one showing the bottle pressure and one showing the pressure you’re sending to your keg(s).
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You need some pipe to take the gas from the regulator to the corny keg. This is usually 3/8 inch. If you have more than one keg you need a manifold, this has one gas input and 2 to 6 outputs. Each output has it’s own isolation valve and has a “check valve” to prevent back-flow. Again, these usually have 3/8 push-fit inputs and outputs.
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At the keg end of the pipe you need a ball-lock gas disconnect with a 3/8 John Guest push-fit connector. The picture below shows a pair. The grey one is gas, the black one is beer (we’ll come back to this). They are different sizes so make sure you use the right one on the right post of the corny keg.
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Gas goes into the keg to carbonate your beer and push the beer out. The corny keg has a gas-in post and a beer-out post. The black ball-lock disconnect goes on the beer-out post and you’ll need some more pipe from the black disconnect to whatever tap you choose. Normally the beer pipe is a smaller bore, most commonly 3/16 inch. You may need a John Guest 3/16-3/8 straight coupler if the black disconnect comes with a 3/8 push-fit connector and you’re using 3/16 beer line. You may need the same at the tap end unless you buy taps with 3/16 John Guest fittings.
