Sankey liquid-out conversion to ball lock bev. out body?

btbedell · January 4, 2012, 6:20am

I have a kegerator, and I have been wondering if it’s possible to have just one faucet line setup using a ball-lock connector, but that can be used for both corny kegs and sankey-style kegs. Of course, this would mean converting the sankey tap, so I never tried it out. When I swap kegs, it doesn’t take all that long to change out the connections.

But…Now that I’ve received a counter-pressure filler, the situation is more urgent. Let’s say I’m headed out and would like to quickly fill a growler from both the sankey keg and the corny keg. It would be great if the counter-pressure setup could use just one connection, the ball-lock connector. But for this to be possible, I need to convert the sankey beverage out body piece to a ball lock beverage out body piece.

Is this possible? Has anyone done it? And…the million dollar question…can it be done without disrupting the flow too much and causing turbulence/foaming?

Just to be clear…the idea is for the Sankey liquid out port to be modified to look like the liquid out port on the top of a homebrew keg.

Thanks for any ideas.

jon_h · January 4, 2012, 7:08am

This is possible. Get a liquid-out post and poppet for one of these model cornelius kegs (Firestone V Challenger, Firestone VI Challenger, Firestone Super Challenger) its 5/8"-18 thread on the inside. Get a 5/8" close nipple as well as a 5/8" mpt to 1/4" or even 3/16" barb. Connect the close nipple to the mpt barb fitting, connect your 3/16" beverage line to the barb, connect the other end of the bev line to the beer out barb on the sankey D fitting. The tricky part is taking the other end of the 5/8" close nipple and putting the right ss washer on it, so that it will hold the rubber seal correctly, so as to also hold in place the poppet correctly, so it seats right into the post, when attached to the close nipple. “are you watching this camera guy” I hope that makes sense? The beer will flow out of the sankey D, through whatever length of bev line, into the barb end, into the close nipple, into the post. From there you can connect your quick disconnect and the beer will flow. After all that explaining I am not even sure what question I just answered?

nighthawk · January 4, 2012, 1:01pm

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49919

does this help?

jon_h · January 4, 2012, 3:31pm

yeah, what nighthawk said!

friendsr2thirsty · January 4, 2012, 4:51pm

Or, just get (2) of part # K027 from Northern Brewer. If you have the MFL connections on your ball lock fitting (not barbs) you should be all set with FFLs on your gas and beverage lines. Also, make sure to use a 10-cent nylon washer between the metal-to-metal connections.

A third option is to put a male flare on the end of your liquid out line (from the sanke) and attach it to the female flare on your serving line.

dean_palmer · January 4, 2012, 8:52pm

Keep it simple, use female flare fittings on the ends of your gas and beer lines and just swap out whatever adapter you need, even those not invented yet

http://thebeerjournals.com/Kegerators.html

NB sells everything you need without inventing anything crazy and hard to service.

btbedell · January 5, 2012, 4:46am

Thanks all…this is exactly what I needed to know. My LHBS didn’t think it was possible, and they have a great hardware department. (I should have searched the forums better beforehand, though. I see this has been answered before. Still, I didn’t think about putting the poppet/post at the end of a line instead of right on the sankey itself. I’ll have to consider that.)

Cheers!