Beer taps and children

So I’ve got a couple of young teenagers that are starting to get curious these days. Beer taps sitting in the livingroom and temptation is growing.
I’ve already threatened to rip their arms off and beat them to death if I catch them messing with it…and so far that seems to do the trick. :lol:
But I don’t suspect that threat will last forever, so I’ve been thinking about getting some faucet locks or something for when I’m not around. I don’t really want to have to open the kegerator to connect/disconnect the lines to draw a pint.

Any thoughts or good ideas on how to easily disable the taps?
Any good deals on faucet locks? (I’ve got Perlick faucets.)

wouldn’t faucet lock be almost more of a pain than just opening the kegerator and popping off the connection?
Never used tap locks but seem to be just as much of a hassle.

kids will be kids they will get there hands on beer somehow

Faucet lock. That’s what I’d do. What’s popping off the connection gonna do? Your kids will figure that out, quick! And yeah, kid’s will be kids and will get there hands on beer somehow, but that doesn’t mean you throw in the towel and just not worry about it. It’s your responsibility to worry about it and do your best to keep it out of their hands.

I built my kegerator 4 months ago… I have a 10 week old son… guess what I already have sitting in a drawer at home? Yeah, I have about 10+ years before I have to worry about it, but I’m prepared. I do also plan on giving my kids a little taste now and then and teach them to not abuse alcohol. I partied in high school and when I went to college I knew how to handle myself and did ok. I went to high school with a lot of goody goody kids who never touched alcohol until they went to college. A LOT bombed out because they couldn’t handle themselves. So, my goal is to teach my children that there’s a time and place for alcohol and to know your limit.

(Stepping down off my soapbox now, sorry)

Let your kids taste the beer on occasion, and once they start asking for it, let them drink a little at home with meals. Make it clear that drinking beer without your permission would be a bad thing to do and if you catch them doing it, then put on the locks. Take away the mystique and the beer will lose a lot of it’s attraction for teens. (I have an almost 15-yr-old daughter at home who’s getting curious despite all the “just say no” crap they feed them in school.)

I like this guys idea for locking taps.

Inline solenoid valves placed on the liquid lines and activated by a keyed ignition switch on the outside of the kegerator.

[quote=“dobe12”]P.S. Can’t wait till Legman logs in and sees all this crap. Think he’ll even sift through it all? I wouldn’t :lol: [/quote] Yes I did and it has been deleted. Y’all are lucky I don’t issue some warnings for the language being used and that childish display of behavior.
Keep the forum clean and friendly or you will find yourselves gone. Everyone understand?

Enough said.

i dont know how your taps are set up. but…

if you have some welding skills you could fashion some tap sized holes in the back of a lock box. may not be room for big tap handles, and might be bulky and inconvenient.

http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... KYBEPMCMAQ

something like that, with holes cut in the back to screw your taps through

dont know if it will work right… just tossing around ideas

[quote=“Legman”] …
Y’all are lucky I don’t issue some warnings for the language being used and that childish display of behavior.
Keep the forum clean and friendly or you will find yourselves gone. Everyone understand?

Enough said.[/quote]
Don’t know what happened -
But - I’m not so very forgiving.

I think if I saw it, a few members would be gone.

66 posts of garbage??? Give me a break!

P-J
ALSO a moderator

thinking about the lockbox link i sent you earlier. you could also cut holes in the bottom, where the spouts would dispense. this would give you room for tap handles. so you would use a key to open the door, which would give you access to the tap handles. i hope that makes since like it does in my head…

there are a lot of cheap lockboxes that are just thin metal and a lock. you would need to find one that has the side with the larger diameter open, like a door.

don’t know happened. and i don’t want too. thank you for keeping the forum clean

This is an interesting and obviously heated topic (well, maybe not if you got to it late) that I have thought about a lot lately. The kegs obviously present a very difficult to moderate problem with or without out locks. And bottles seem just as difficult. The idea of socializing your children to beer may work for some but may not work for others as I’m sure there are plenty of alcoholics who were exposed to alcohol in a responsible manner at a younger age. On the other hand there are probably plenty of non-drinkers who came from heavily drinking families. Individual circumstances breed individualized reactions.

So I believe, in my incredibly non-conclusive posting, that you need to figure out what works best for your family. This is the terribly difficult thing about parenting. No matter what someone else says your situation is not the same. Their advice may help, it may not apply and it may harm your situation. That said, it never hurts to consider others opinions as long as you know your own circumstances and beliefs and how that advice would play out in your situation. So in short; good luck and let me know what works for you because I’ve still got a few years to go.

[quote=“mplsbrewer”]This is an interesting and obviously heated topic (well, maybe not if you got to it late) that I have thought about a lot lately. The kegs obviously present a very difficult to moderate problem with or without out locks. And bottles seem just as difficult. The idea of socializing your children to beer may work for some but may not work for others as I’m sure there are plenty of alcoholics who were exposed to alcohol in a responsible manner at a younger age. On the other hand there are probably plenty of non-drinkers who came from heavily drinking families. Individual circumstances breed individualized reactions.

So I believe, in my incredibly non-conclusive posting, that you need to figure out what works best for your family. This is the terribly difficult thing about parenting. No matter what someone else says your situation is not the same. Their advice may help, it may not apply and it may harm your situation. That said, it never hurts to consider others opinions as long as you know your own circumstances and beliefs and how that advice would play out in your situation. So in short; good luck and let me know what works for you because I’ve still got a few years to go.[/quote]

I totally agree. Every parent has their own situation to deal with and must make the right decision for their family.

I think faucet locks would be the way to go as well. Unless of coarse, you want to build a home bar and put a heavy duty lock on the door. :wink: You can pick up faucet locks for around $40. Not sure if you have any Perls or not, but seems like I remember seeing people having issues with the locks working properly with those.

[quote=“P-J”][quote=“Legman”] …
Y’all are lucky I don’t issue some warnings for the language being used and that childish display of behavior.
Keep the forum clean and friendly or you will find yourselves gone. Everyone understand?

Enough said.[/quote]
Don’t know what happened -
But - I’m not so very forgiving.

I think if I saw it, a few members would be gone.

66 posts of garbage??? Give me a break!

P-J
ALSO a moderator[/quote]

It was a slightly heated debate about the necessity of tap locks. Yes, it went way off topic into he said she said crap (which admittedly was completely unnecessary), but if people get kicked off a forum for discussing a topic as serious as alcohol and child safety… what’s the point of the forum? Some people just take arguments/discussions personally when there’s no need for it. It was a moral debate.

[quote=“dobe12”]Faucet lock. That’s what I’d do. What’s popping off the connection gonna do? Your kids will figure that out, quick! And yeah, kid’s will be kids and will get there hands on beer somehow, but that doesn’t mean you throw in the towel and just not worry about it. It’s your responsibility to worry about it and do your best to keep it out of their hands.

I built my kegerator 4 months ago… I have a 10 week old son… guess what I already have sitting in a drawer at home? Yeah, I have about 10+ years before I have to worry about it, but I’m prepared. I do also plan on giving my kids a little taste now and then and teach them to not abuse alcohol. I partied in high school and when I went to college I knew how to handle myself and did ok. I went to high school with a lot of goody goody kids who never touched alcohol until they went to college. A LOT bombed out because they couldn’t handle themselves. So, my goal is to teach my children that there’s a time and place for alcohol and to know your limit.

(Stepping down off my soapbox now, sorry)[/quote]
This is the right approach, I believe. Any other way and you’re putting alcohol on a pedestal as a “taboo”.

I missed the whole debate, I agree. It defeats the point of the forum if we can’t discuss these things and people just get booted. We don’t live in 1930s/1940s Germany for lyin’ out in the crowd.
Having said that, it sounds like some people were being immature. I think folks need to realize we’re adults, we need to discuss things as adults. Not like monkeys flinging crap at each other.

I find this last comment to be somewhat offensive to monkeys :wink:

I find this last comment to be somewhat offensive to monkeys :wink: [/quote]

It’s equally offensive to crap.

:cheers:

I think Shadetree’s response is the most honest approach. As a youngster around the house, starting around maybe 10, I remember a little cobalt blue beer mug, maybe 3 ounce. My Dad used to allow me to fill it from his beer on the occasional Friday night. It was a treat. Of course it grew into an obsession :lol:

As dobe said, we started debating a bit with each other as dobe and I somehow misunderstood each other… but I didn’t see any foul language anywhere and it was more-or-less civil. We had a bit of back-and-forth but at the end of the day we realized we were straying off topic and it wasn’t accomplishing anything so we backed off and it seemed like there was no issue at the end. I have no ill-will towards him. There were some others involved as well, but they weren’t horribly rude or foul-mouthed, either.

I figure I must have missed someone who came in late with foul language and craziness, because I didn’t really see any of that while I was involved.

Here were my thoughts in summarized form:

  • I haven’t heard good things about the functionality of faucet locks. I hear that often you can still pour, albeit with a much restricted flow… which isn’t the point. That said, I don’t own any, so I may just be hearing/spreading an urban legend with that.
  • I don’t think faucet locks offer much of a deterrent anyway, as they are easily circumvented by a determined kid.
  • I think it’s important to educate my child about alcohol rather than feel a need to lock it up without reason, hence I wouldn’t want to use an easily overcome deterrent like a faucet lock unless warranted.
  • If my kid had an issue keeping her hands off my alcohol despite my best efforts to educate her and enforce some simple rules, I think the responsible thing for me to do is remove the kegerator from the house until she moves out. I’d move mine to the garage and not give her a key. If she breaks into the garage in order to get to the beer, I’ve got bigger issues to deal with.
  • I thought the link to the guy with the ignition system for his kegerator was pretty cool. I think that may be functional as long as you lock the kegerator door, and at the very least it was pretty geeky cool… “Excuse me while I start my kegerator.” LOL
  • Each family is different and each parent has different circumstances. We can offer up advice as we see it, but at the end of the day each parent needs to do what they feel is best.

Agree with this approach, I’ll start him off with a IIPA :lol:

It’s funny how alcohol can be so taboo here in the US but in many European countries it is completely acceptable for people under the age of 21 to drink socially.

Agree with this approach, I’ll start him off with a IIPA :lol:

It’s funny how alcohol can be so taboo here in the US but in many European countries it is completely acceptable for people under the age of 21 to drink socially.[/quote]

But they have other issues to worry about: hairy armpits and legs and strange accents just to name two. :wink: