King Keg and Sodastream « Brew UK Forum

King Keg and Sodastream

1 year ago | Bazza (Member)

Hi All,

I'm hoping to move from bottling to casking, but after many many phone calls around the Greater Belfast area, I can find no company who will provide a service whereby I bring them an empty domestic S30 CO2 cannister and leave with a full one. Postage costs for sending them to mainland UK are too high to make it worthwhile, so it looks like my only option is to try Sodastream cannisters.
There's an Asda Living not far from me which will sells 60L CO2 cannisters for under £20 and refills for under £10, so I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience with using 60L Sodastream cannisters with, say, a King Keg with an S30 inlet valve. If so, do I need any sort of special adaptor?

Cheers,

-Barry

Planning: Marstons Pedigree or London Pride clone
Conditioning (Bottles): Sam Adams Boston Lager Clone
Drinking (Bottles): Sierra Nevada Pale Ale Clone
Drinking (King Keg): McMullen's Country Best Bitter

Read responses...

Responses

Varnish:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

You'll need an adaptor.
I think some place in Australia sells them. I'll find you a link.

Actually stomehelm homebrew sell them. Google it.

Bazza:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Thanks Varnish.

I've had search around and have found UK sites selling adaptors for around £10, but they seem to only work with the 35L cannisters which are apparently soon to be discontinued.

-Barry

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

Barry, I can get those ones if you want, £9.99 but you are correct they will only work with the older (stainless steel) sodastream bottles.

Planning:Maybe a lager.
Fermenting:
Conditioning:Pale with Styrians
Drinking:Cascade Pale Ale, Summer Lightning

Bazza:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Hi Greg.

Thanks for your kind offer.

I was following up a couple of final leads this morning. It seems that the s30 cylinder refill option is dead in the water. The food industry were only interested in hiring out large tanks to me, and the fire extinguisher industry were understandably nervous regarding liability with refilling tanks they know nothing about.

I have sourced one place close to where I live who do refills of the older 35L Sodastream tanks, at £6.99 a refill, but the guy did warn me that the cost has been increasing steadily over the years.

There's one more option to me before I make a decision and that's CO2 bulbs. Can anyone who's used them tell me how many of them, typically, you would use to recharge a keg with 20L beer over a lifetime of, say, one month?

Christ - how difficult is it to be able to pour your own pint in Northern Ireland?

Cheers,

-Barry

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

I would say about 2 bulbs per keg but depends on the beer and how quickly you drink it.

An HB s30 cylinder would last me about 6 months, running 3 kegs. You could post them back for a refill, don't think it would cost you that much in postage (about £5?) so refill would cost about £11?

Planning:Maybe a lager.
Fermenting:
Conditioning:Pale with Styrians
Drinking:Cascade Pale Ale, Summer Lightning

Bazza:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Hi Greg,

I'd prefer to go the S30 route but I have read that a lot of couriers won't ship full cylinders.

Checked the postage and it's £9 to my postcode, but if I include a refill with other grain orders, the postage won't be as bad, so I'm going to go with my original plan and get King Keg + s30 cylinder.

I take it that it's just a matter of giving Parcelforce the empty container when they arrive with a full one?

Thanks (yet again) for all your help.

-Barry

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

No, what you need to do is take the empty one (packaged up) down the post office and just send to us Royal Mail recorded. We can then send a refill out with an order you place.

Email me if it doesn't make sense??

Planning:Maybe a lager.
Fermenting:
Conditioning:Pale with Styrians
Drinking:Cascade Pale Ale, Summer Lightning

m&m:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Barry,
Im just about to bottle my third AG brew but am considering kegging in future. Still looking into Cornelius and king kegs. Gas however as you know in NI seems to be a little tricky. I too fancied the idea of using 60l soda stream cylinders. Have you had any joy with this yet?

Bazza:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Hi m&m,

In the end I went for a King Keg and the Hambleton Bard s30 cylinder from this site. I kegged my first AG a few weeks ago. It tastes great, if a little flat. I'm constantly pumping CO2 into it because I only put a 19L brew into a 25L keg, so lots of head space, plus I didn't have the keg lid on tight enough during carbonation, so lost most of the natural CO2 before I discovered this. Still, the HB S20 cylinder is doing the trick.

There were a couple of places in the Belfast area who did the 60L soda stream cylinders but I could find no adaptor in exsitence to use these cylinders with any type of keg. Maybe this has changed in recent months.

You can get an adaptor for the older 35L cylinders okay. I could only find one source of a refil for the 35L in Belfast but after speaking to the guy I didn't get much confidence that they'd continue doing these cylinders for much longer, though I could be wrong. The shop was in the Woodstock/Cregagh road area. I can try and dig out their details if you like?

I gave up on the Cornie notion in the end after numerous fruitless calls to the likes of Calor, BOC AirLiquide, et al, but maybe you'll have better luck.

No one in any of the gas/fire extinguisher/paint gun specialists had ever heard of the HB S30 cylinder. I did spot, on a different forum, another HB S30 cylinder user from this side of the Irish Sea who's local Homebrew shop did refils but they were based in County Leitrim, so a bit of a trek.

So as you say, gas and NI aren't great bedfellows. *insert politial satire here mentioning irony, Stormont, MPs and plenty of gas hahaha etc*

Cheers,

-Barry

m&m:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Great, thanks for advice. That saves me a bit of leg work. Will stick to bottles for a bit longer but hope to go for the King Keg some time in near future. Need to do a bit of work first bringing my brew up to standard before I shell out any more cash. Thanks again.

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