What can I do with an empty beer keg

What Can I Do with an Empty Beer Keg?

With the increase of DIY home bars being fitted in people’s homes, beer kegs have become very popular. When they are empty, beer kegs can be used to make all sorts of fun things, and people are always finding new ways to turn something that once held alcohol into something new.

Some people have converted beer kegs into seats to go in their home bar, and others have been even more adventurous and have transformed beer kegs into things that have absolutely nothing to do with drinking.

Depending on the size of the beer keg that you have, and how good you are with DIY, there are lots of things that you can do with it. Some people have transformed their empty beer kegs into planters for flowers and other shrubbery. Other people have transformed them into even more adventurous things, such as BBQs, DIY pizza ovens, and overhead lights, even tandoor ovens.

A Plumber got really creative!

 

But one of the best transformations has to be in the various bars all over the country where beer kegs have been transformed into urinals. This is a fun feature and really ties the entire building together. So there are lots of fun things that you can do with an empty beer keg.

How do you drain an old keg?

If you have an old keg of beer that is still fairly full then you can easily drain it. But before you do anything, make sure you are wearing protective footwear as beer kegs can be very heavy when they are full.

With safety as a priority, you should begin emptying the keg by spinning it so that it is sideways and facing away from you. Next, you should take a spanner and hook it onto the slots of the keg so that one shoulder of the spanner is pressing against the ball valve of the keg.

With this in place, you will find that the pressure within the keg begins to release. There is a lot of pressure within the keg, so you will need to repeat this process between 3-4 times to remove all the pressure that has built up within the keg.

It is the pressure that makes draining an old keg dangerous, so once this is all gone, the rest of the process is easy. Simply open the tap, and then you will be able to let the rest of the liquid simply drain away.

What can I do with an empty beer keg

Is it illegal to sell empty beer kegs?

Yes, it is illegal to sell empty beer kegs as they are technically the property of the company that sold them to you. If you come into the possession of empty beer kegs, for example from buying a new home, then it can be difficult to know what to do with them.

Some people might suggest you sell them onto someone who wants them for a DIY project, or to a salvage yard, but before this you need to check who technically owns the beer kegs.

Technically, beer kegs are supposed to be returned to the place they were bought once they become empty. This is because kegs are expensive to make and when they are returned they will be refilled and reused. The beer keg is the property of the vendor, so in an ideal world you should return them to the same vendor.

You should never attempt to sell empty beer kegs to salvage as this is technically theft. So, if you have an empty beer keg in your home you should always attempt to return it to the place that you got it from.

Are empty kegs worth anything?

Yes, empty kegs are worth quite a bit of money. This is because they are made with solid metal, so you would get a decent amount of money if you were to trade them in to salvage.

Beer kegs usually weigh around 30 pounds when they are empty, which will usually get you around $20/25 if you trade it in for scrap. This isn’t lots of money, but considering the beer keg doesn’t cost you anything, it is a fair amount. However, if you were to sell an empty beer keg for scrap you would, technically, be breaking the law.

As we have said, beer kegs are the property of the store where you bought them from. Once a keg is empty, you are supposed to return it to said store, and then they will reuse it. However, a lot of people have caught on to the fact that they are worth some money which is how keg theft has come about.

Due to the increase in keg theft, a lot of scrapyards won’t actually take beer kegs because they are aware of the law. So even though they are worth money, you should never try to sell your empty beer kegs.

What happens if you don’t return a keg?

Technically, if you do not return a beer keg once you have drunk all of its contents, then you are stealing it. However, this doesn’t mean that you’ll have the police turning up at your door with a warrant to search your home for the missing barrel.

When stores sell kegs of beer they are aware that there is a fairly high chance that people will not return them, so they often add a deposit for the keg on top of the cost of the beer.

If you do choose to return your empty keg to the store then you will get your deposit back. If you are buying another keg of beer then the deposit money that you get back will roll on to the new keg and so on. So if you don’t return the keg to the store, the worst that is going to happen is that you will lose the deposit.

But in a lot of cases people didn’t even know about these deposits in the first place, so you aren’t really losing anything. It just means that a new keg will have to be produced to replace the one that you didn’t return.