Beers in a "mini-keg"
 

Have a smallish party coming up and was thinking of getting a couple of mini keg thingies. Don't know who all uses them. Any ideas or recommendations?

If you like beer they're a good deal. Most are under 20 bucks and just shy of a 12 pack in volume.

About as close to draught for some interesting beers as you're going to get...depending on what your local shops will carry.

-spence

I used to buy Dinkel Acker in mini kegs and refill the mini kegs with homebrew. The Dinkel mini was brown. There was also another brand I used that was mostly white with a little green and gold.

The only drawback I found was you need to use it all fairly quickly if you use a gravity tap cause it will go flat ( no fizz). If you have a system that uses the mini CO2 cartridges , it will stay carbonated.

Some of the micro-breweries use small 5 gallon kegs. I know I can order stuff from Southampton in that size. Great for parties :drool:.
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In the strategic words of the dude, "Thats F'ing interesting"

many advanced homebrewers use the 5 gallon soda cans to keg beer. They are called "cornelius kegs". I use to have 3 or 4 different styles in the Conelius egs all hooked up in a row to the CO2 bottle through a manifold. You can also use the kegs and CO2 bottle to force carbonate the beer. thus , after the fermentation , you don't need to add priming sugar and wait a week or so. just attach a CO2 bottle and shake the beer in the keg and in just a short time you will have a carbonated product. many a time I force carbonated then put it in bottles for beer contests. lots of time that forced carbonation saved my butt when I was running late for a contest and there was no time left for natural carbonating the beer.

Big issue with using soda kegs is you need to rense and clean them a lot to get out any traces of soda. You will lose 5 gallons of beer instantly if there is any soda taste or smell left in the keg. I had special fitting hooked up to the soda keg quick disconnects and I would flush them with hot water , open and scrob , flush again , add bleach water , flush again and a final rinse with water plus iodophor before kegging. Once you get the kegs cleaned for beer the first time , reuseing them for subsequent batches was much easier. I once lost 5 gallons to a sick lemon or lime taste that somehow survived the wash and flush routine. just the slightest hint of that sugary lime taste makes the beer very undersireable.