As you research the brewing and keg of your home brew, you’ll see one term used over and over again: Cornelieus Keg, also known as “cheesy” kegs. What exactly are these?
Typically, home brewers use smaller kegs than you’re used to seeing. Typical commercial brewery kegs for use in bars and restaurants are 15.5 gallon kegs. While you can choose to use these, most home brewers use the smaller 5-gallon kegs known as Cornelius Kegs. These kegs offer many advantages to the home brewer.
First, a typical batch of homebrew is 5 gallons, so larger kegs aren’t necessary. Also, moving and storing a 5 gallon barrel is much more convenient than larger barrels. If you have a converted chest freezer that you’re using for your kegerator, it’s nearly impossible to lift a full 15.5 gallon keg to drop from the top. The smaller kegs allow you to store a variety of homebrews to keep on tap. Also, you can fit more kegs into a smaller kegerator to save space. You can store up to 3 or 4 cheesy kegs in a freezer as small as 5.5 to 7 cubic feet. Finally, the cheesy barrels are much cheaper than the larger ones.
Cornelius barrels get their name from the original maker of them, the Cornelius Company, originally of Annoka, Minnesota. The canisters were originally designed for soft drink companies as a means of distributing their soft drinks to restaurants. However, in recent years, soft drink companies have switched to using soft drink mixes in plastic bags inside cartons for distribution to restaurants. This has resulted in many Cornelius barrels no longer in use. But their loss is the homebrewers gain.
An advantage of the Cornelius barrel is the fact that all sizes and shapes of accessories are standardized, so it is easy to find replacement parts. Since there are so many of them, they are perfect to recondition and use for brewing purposes. There are other companies that make cheesy barrels, so finding them isn’t too hard. You can buy a new one or look for a used one. There is most likely a soda distributor in your town, and you can talk to them to see if they have any cheesy oldies 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 attach the hose fittings to the valves. It’s an important tip to know that the fittings are not interchangeable, so it’s best to make sure when you buy additional cheesy barrels that you buy the same type of valves to avoid confusion.
It’s not a bad idea to start with two barrels. That way you can always have a backup batch of beer ready to go and have a constant pipeline of home brew at all times. Of course, as you get caught up in brewing, you may want to have multiple kegs available so you can have a variety of homebrews on tap.
