Hi all! Long time BA, first time homebrewer. I just brewed my first batch of beer. (One gallon Extract Brown Ale from Northern Brewer). The beer is currently fermenting and I am considering kegging in a one gallon keg instead of bottling. I came across this on Amazon and am considering purchasing this or something similar. Two questions. 1) Am I biting off more than I can chew and should stick to bottling? 2) If I should keg instead of bottle, does anyone have any experience with these one gallon kegs and has one to recommend? Thanks!
My recommendation is to skip the keg and bottle. It's an extra degree of difficulty that you don't need to be worrying about until you nail down your brew/bottle process. Will those kegs work? Maybe . . . just be aware they use proprietary parts that could be a problem. My guess it will take multiple cartridges for the initial carb'ing and if any of the fitting give you a problem you'll pretty much be on your own. Kegging is great, but for the most part these wee kegs have never really caught on. My one experience with a pressurized growler (same concept) saw it fail after the third time of use. But check out the Home Bar Forum . . . we talk about pressures and fittings and keg-mysteries all the time over there.
I would bottle (never thought I’d say that) if you decide you like brewing then you can move up size and get 2.5 or the less expensive 5 gallon kegs. 100 dollars to get one gallon doesn’t seem worth it and that regulator seems finicky at best.
If you're doing 1-gallon batches and you're not sure you'll stick with the hobby, I'd find some flip-tops and bottle into those. Much simpler/less gear required/more reusable.
Thanks all, my reservation to bottling is all the sanitizing. I guess the potential problems with the keg would be a bigger headache.
Because it is your first batch, I'd bottle, Brown ales in my experience can stand up to bottling, at least better than a NEIPA, where the hop flavors are prone to rapid oxidation. As @deadwolfbones said, sanitizing is the easy part. You need to clean before you sanitize, and for that, I would get some PBW and a bottle brush, scrub, and rinse three times with water. I used oxi-free for years instead of PBW with no problems. The CO2 cartridges and regulators of the growler set up concern me. When I looked at cartridge/mini-regulator kegging systems years ago, it seemed that there were many unsatisfied reviews. Maybe they are better now? If you are not finding a lot of strong reviews, I would avoid. If you really want to jump into kegging but wish to remain a small batch brewer, I recommend looking into kegs that use ball lock or pinlock fittings and hook to a CO2 tank and standard regulator. I feel like I have seen one gallon kegs, although at the moment I am seeing the 1.75 gallon kegs at Adventures in Homebrewing or 1.5 gallon Torpedo kegs at MoreBeer. For small batch brewing even a 5 gallon tank of CO2 will last a long time in a leak free system.
One more for bottling. Like @Prep8611 I never thought I would say this. These proprietary growler/keg/dispenser designs universally suck IMO. Now, granted I can be a curmudgeon. But I have yet to see a suitable replacement for the Ball Lock Cornelius keg we all use for homebrewing. And it's not even close. Be aware that when you have a faucet directly attached to a keg, as in this design, the pressure required to keep the beer properly carbonated (11 or 12 psi) will result in beer pouring like a fire hose. Good luck getting a decent pour. The picture provided is a glass of foam, so there you go. The recommended setting of 4 to 5 psi will get your beer to less than 2 vols, which is almost comical. Yeah. Stay away. Some things just need to be done the right way. You can get very high quality 1, 2, 2.5, 3 gallon etc. Cornelius kegs that actually work, and the homebrewing community is well prepared to support these systems unlike this proprietary design. Cheers.
