15 replies to this topic

[chuck_d]

Does anyone do this?  I have a bunch of corny kegs not in use at the moment.  So I was thinking that I could fill a couple of them with water to have on-hand should something happen to our water supply, that way we would have emergency potable drinking water.  I had been thinking about doing this for awhile, and then a couple days ago our water supply was interrupted, and when it returned it was pouring out brown.  I figure for 2 people, 2 kegs will give us a minimum of 5 days of drinking water, and up to 10 days.

 

But my question, for anyone who does this, and for anyone who thinks about it, is how to you treat the water prior to filling the keg?  Would you carbon filter it before filling the kegs?  Or do you want to keep the chloramine/chlorine in there due to the fact that you're going to have the water sitting in the keg for a long time?  I plan on preparing the kegs just as I would if I were filling it with beer.  PBW cleaning, rinse, starsan final sani-treatment.  I *may* add a final rinse of the starsan however, to remove the taste, but maybe not, maybe just fill on the foam.

 

So, your thoughts?  Is 2 kegs enough for 2 people?

 

Cheers,

chuck_d

 

[Big Nake]

I don't know the answer but I have filtered water before and left it in a bucket or my mash kettle for between 1-2 weeks (unable to brew when I wanted to) and wondered if it would start to go funky after awhile. It was filtered so all of the chlorine would be gone. In a keg, I could see hitting it with just enough CO2 to seal the hatch and once you did that I can't see how it would spoil. I'm just thinking out loud here but you and I have both had these same thoughts in our heads, for sure.

[SchwanzBrewer]

Might add some Kmeta to ensure it's microbiologically stable and keep it under pressure.

[chuck_d]

Might add some Kmeta to ensure it's microbiologically stable and keep it under pressure.

 

But if that is required, I might as well not bother filtering to save time and money.

 

I don't know the answer but I have filtered water before and left it in a bucket or my mash kettle for between 1-2 weeks (unable to brew when I wanted to) and wondered if it would start to go funky after awhile. It was filtered so all of the chlorine would be gone. In a keg, I could see hitting it with just enough CO2 to seal the hatch and once you did that I can't see how it would spoil. I'm just thinking out loud here but you and I have both had these same thoughts in our heads, for sure.

 

Yeah, I guess that's another question I have.  How frequently should I replace the water in the kegs?

 

On a related note: at a previous brewery I worked in, all the water in the building was filtered at the entry point.  So that meant even the toilet water was chlorine free.  Not exactly the ideal setup, if I were designing and implementing it, I would definitely have split off to the bathrooms before filtration.  It's also a lot of unnecessary load on the filter, making you have to replace it sooner/more frequently.  I'd even rather have multiple filters set up directly in front of the equipment that requires it.  While it is more pieces of equipment to maintain, it also means that a failure of one filter doesn't shut you down, you can redirect from one filter into the vessel with the broken, the benefit of redundancy.  I think that is actually how I plan to set up this new brewhouse, with 3 filter setups: one each for the HLT, CLT and MLT/blending station.

Edited by chuck_d, 05 April 2016 - 03:04 PM.

[SchwanzBrewer]

Filter it depending on the source. Our water sucks from all the chlorine and chloramine so we filter it all.

 

The Kmeta is just a deterrent and will help it stay stable long term in case there's anything in the keg that could ruin it.

[SchwanzBrewer]

Got a filter in mind?

 

I was using 2 big charcoal filters that I daisy chained together and it made my water awesome. I got a chlorine tester and there was no trace of chlorine (I believe it tests total chlorine + chloramine).

 

Unfortunately home depot stopped selling the media for the filters so I switched to regular house filters after 2 years of using the big ones. They only get down to 1ppm on the tester so I throw in a little kmeta on each brew in the HLT.

 

If and when I ever start brewing commercially I'll need a better filtration system. I was also thinking that we'd want it split from the toilet and bath water, but the cleaning, brewing, and bar water will all be filtered. 

Edited by SchwanzBrewer, 05 April 2016 - 03:35 PM.

[djinkc]

I think George has done this.  Maybe he'll see this thread.

 

Personally I would put something in it to prevent the water from spoiled.  

 

ETOH and hop oils come to mind.

[Deerslyr]

I've thought about this as well and will follow the thread.  I've kegged and carbonated water before, but that was chilled and consumed so it didn't really have a chance to go bad.

[neddles]

ETOH and hop oils come to mind.

Hey wait a minute! You might be onto something.

[SchwanzBrewer]

Hey wait a minute! You might be onto something.

 

Ethanol is a pretty good microbiological stabilizer...

[ChicagoWaterGuy]

If your water tastes good, I'd see no problem with filling clean sanitized cornies right from the tap. Bottled water has to sit for months and its fine to drink without additional chemicals. 

[brewman]

So your going to fill MY kegs with water?

[gnef]

A random thought I had when reading this is looking at the pasteurization tables, and just heating the water to an appropriate temperature (maybe 160F?), and then filling the kegs with the hot water and letting them set. They will pull a vacuum as they chill, so you could add some CO2 or Nitrogen which I think would be better.

[SchwanzBrewer]

A random thought I had when reading this is looking at the pasteurization tables, and just heating the water to an appropriate temperature (maybe 160F?), and then filling the kegs with the hot water and letting them set. They will pull a vacuum as they chill, so you could add some CO2 or Nitrogen which I think would be better.

 

That's a pretty good idea. 10psi would be plenty.

[chuck_d]

So has anyone started doing this since the thread was started?  I am reconditioning a couple kegs this week for this project.  Unfortunately, I don't have my kegerator set up right now, so no active and working CO2 setup either.  And I think my keg charger was lost a couple years ago when my on-the-go beer toolbox was left in the back of a truck after helping a fellow brewer out with a special event for his investors.  So I'm just shaking the keg with StarSan, and won't be able to push it through the diptube.  Once I get my parts reorganized and order up some replacements I'll resanitize the whole thing properly, but I think this should be good for now.  Especially considering the two kegs I'm using were previously used as my longterm storage for working strength StarSan.

 

For now I'm going to just fill straight from the tap.  The only filtration system I have is a Brita pitcher, and filling 5 gallons from that thing would be a giant PITA.

 

If we buy this house, I plan on doing a little plumbing work in the kitchen.  I'll either put a Tee with a valve & QD on the cold water pipe, so I can connect a hose under the sink to run to whatever I want it for, which could be a filter setup.  Or I'm going to install a diverter with the ability to switch between filtered an unfiltered water coming out of the normal faucet.  I'm leaning towards the first option because it would also be useful if I ever decide to brew on this stove and need to use my chiller.  The kitchen faucet doesn't have that connection where you can screw on a garden hose adapter.

[positiveContact]

pour in boiling water it will probably kill everything in the keg and the water.  seal it up, nail it with a lot of CO2 in the headspace.