Is This A Firkin' Firkin?

[lschiavo]

It acutally has a corked bung hole

I don't know if that is a date code but I see 11-64 stamped on it. It is aluminum. would this thing have any practical homebrewing use?

I'm thinking it would make a nice light fixture or two (sawed in half). It would look cool over a bar or pool table.

Wanna buy it?

 

[ajdelange]

No, it's not a firkin. Pabst never put beer up in firkins AFAIK and that end fitting is obviously for a coupler of some type (which I don't recognize - Pabst now uses American Sankey and that's not a Sankey flange).

No, I don't want to buy it.

 

[lschiavo]

No, it's not a firkin. Pabst never put beer up in firkins AFAIK and that end fitting is obviously for a coupler of some type (which I don't recognize - Pabst now uses American Sankey and that's not a Sankey flange).

No, I don't want to buy it.

I suppose it's an antique pony then.

Would you buy it if it were a light fixture?

 

[lschiavo]

Btw, that seems to be a standard 1/2-in plug threaded into the end. The keg seems to be straight threaded. What would I find if I removed the bung? I cannot imagine how these things worked.

 

[BigEd]

It acutally has a corked bung hole

I don't know if that is a date code but I see 11-64 stamped on it. It is aluminum. would this thing have any practical homebrewing use?

I'm thinking it would make a nice light fixture or two (sawed in half). It would look cool over a bar or pool table.

Wanna buy it?

It's an old Golden Gate keg and, no, it has little practical use. Scrap or fabricating it into something else is about it. Some were converted for Sanke fittings but from the picture that one was not.

 

[lschiavo]

It's an old Golden Gate keg and, no, it has little practical use. Scrap or fabricating it into something else is about it. Some were converted for Sanke fittings but from the picture that one was not.

Thanks for the info. Were these things actually corked back in the day? I like old things. This is obviously from a different era of beer. Do you think 11-64 is a date code? I may just put it up in the brewshop for decoration.

 

[BigEd]

That's not a cork it's a wooden bung. It was removed and replaced with a new one when the keg was cleaned & refilled. I watched these being filled at a local brewery back in the '70s. The kegs would roll down to the work station where a worker would fill the keg then put in a new bung and whack it tight with a big ass mallet.

The 11-64 might be the date of manufacture.

 

[lschiavo]

That's not a cork it's a wooden bung. It was removed and replaced with a new one when the keg was cleaned & refilled. I watched these being filled at a local brewery back in the '70s. The kegs would roll down to the work station where a worker would fill the keg then put in a new bung and whack it tight with a big ass mallet.

The 11-64 might be the date of manufacture.

I can see the grain now in the wood plug. Not cork like you said. Isn't the bung the hole?

 

[BigEd]

I can see the grain now in the wood plug. Not cork like you said. Isn't the bung the hole?

No, the bung is the stopper and the hole is the bunghole.

 

[lschiavo]

No, the bung is the stopper and the hole is the bunghole.

You are smart. I think I knew that. It is the only way it makes sense. So how was one of these tapped in the old days?

 

[ajdelange]

It's not a Golden Gate. Those had a sort of rotary valve in them and gas went in at the top whilst beer came out through a second identical tap on the bottom of the keg. Prior to the introduction of the Golden Gate tap there was a tap in which a rod was driven into the keg at the top displacing a wooden plug. This could be one of those. I don't remember what they were called.

 

[Wayne1]

That keg might be a Hoff-Stevens with a covered up coupler.

Here are some pictures of the Hoff-Stevens tap and coupler.

 

[BigEd]

The fitting is covered on the original picture but if there's two holes it is a Hoff-Stevens.

 

[ajdelange]

The rod based system I am thinking of is described and illustrated here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/anyone-used-tap-rod-style-kegs-94635/. That's how we tapped beer when I was an undergraduate.

 

[lschiavo]

The rod based system I am thinking of is described and illustrated here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/anyone-used-tap-rod-style-kegs-94635/. That's how we tapped beer when I was an undergraduate.

That is interesting. That keg looks identical to mine. Thanks for the link.