Possible cheap 'keggin'?

[vanillabrewer]

Hello, i recently came across a 5 litre plastic bottle which looks like a keg so i got an idea. If i had to put a little tap on the bottom, fill the bottle up with beer and add sugar and seal it like normal keggin, would i than be able to pour my drinks out the tap like a draught or is there something im missing( which is most likely) ?

[vanillabrewer]

normal bottling i mean not kegging. i better start proof reading my posts before i post them. haha

[Ó Flannagáin]

Would be like real ale in the english pubs kind of. Would probably work fine. Make sure the plastic is food grade though. It might stop pouring after a while though because their is no pressure pouring it out. You could put in a valve of some sort at the top to allow air in as the beer flows out, but you'd have to finish it up in a few days or it would spoil because of the oxygen being introduced.

[vanillabrewer]

Oh ok, thats good. wow im suprised i thought there would be some simple problem that would render it useless. By food grade is it that thick stuff? This is a see through plastic bottle that water came in?

[Ó Flannagáin]

If water came in it I would guess it's food grade. Don't quote me on that, but makes sense to me.

[fireballmatt]

It's been done (http://home.chattanooga.net/%7Ecdp/3lkeg/3lkeg.htm) before and doesn't look terribly hard to replicate. I can't promise your brew would keep for long periods of time in there though, so unless you have a standard keg setup and you are just looking for something to take to a party, you will undoubtedly want to bottle.

[Barley-Davidson]

I'm worried about whether the bottle will hold pressure. If it's not airtight the co2 will leak out and the beer won't carbonate. If it is airtight but not strong enough to hold pressure it could burst (danger+beer loss=no good).

[vanillabrewer]

hmm yeah thats true. It was used for bottled water. Bonaqua I think it was.

[vanillabrewer]

Is a coke bottle food grade?

[Ó Flannagáin]

I doubt it would burst with the amount of pressure from just priming... but again, don't quote me on that. Might be worth a test with a coke bottle.

Yea, coke bottle is food grade.

[vanillabrewer]

ok cool. Yeah that bottle I want to use is very similar to that one in the picture. Ok yeah ill give it a try tomorrow. When a plastic bottle 'explodes' does that the cap fly off or the actual bottle break?

[fireballmatt]

ok cool. Yeah that bottle I want to use is very similar to that one in the picture. Ok yeah ill give it a try tomorrow. When a plastic bottle 'explodes' does that the cap fly off or the actual bottle break?

the bottle blows and sometimes fragments depending on how much pressure is behind it. I caught a root-beer plastic bottle shard in the shin one time, not a pleasant experience.

[vanillabrewer]

Didn't realise the art of beer brewing is potentialy lethal. Will just knock it around with a stick before i pick it up. thanks for the heads up though!

[Barley-Davidson]

Saw them burst a plastic water carboy bottle on mythbusters, I don't remember how much it took but it was a lot. If you fabricated a top that would stay on and some fittings that wouldn't leak then you're good to go.