Firkins

[Woolsocks]

Looking for the 11 gallon/ 40 liter SS firkins or if anyone has a source for bungs and keystones for the plastic ones, that would be even better!

[mlabbe]

I use quite a few plastic firkins from Cypherco (now Plastic Kegs America). After long conversations with Simon, one of the owners, and a few brewers in the U.K., I've settled on using standard wood keystones, and plastic shives that are sold directly by Plastic Kegs America (1 310 310 2603). It's the only combination that I have found that works consistently.

Any sort of plastic or rubber keystone doesn't hold securely. I've lost more than a few of them before settling on the wood. Once whetted, the keystone swells to really grab on.

The same is definitely not true of wood shives. My experience has been that they tend to crack because of the extra force needed to overcome the "bounce" when installing in a plastic firkin. The shive that I have gotten from Plastic Kegs America is a two part unit. It is rigid plastic with a rubbery seal. This combination seems to grip well.

I've been on the receiving and the shipping end transporting filled firkins between the U.S. and the U.K., and I saw quite a few failures before I found this combination. Since the change to this combination, I haven't had a seal failure yet (Hold on a second, I might be tempting fate, I need to go knock on wood).

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
Mike

[Woolsocks]

That is great news -- I was under the impression that the plastic firkins were unusable until the fittings thing was resolved. I'll be ordering up some of the parts you mentioned -- wood keystones sound fun anyway.

[mic_mac]

After struggling with this for a while, my current contract-brewery uses cypher-co 9s (c.41litre) with rubber keystones & plastic shives from Eurobung (Yorkshire UK - I don't know if they export).

After struggling for a while with fizzing/leaking casks & occasionally a total blow-out of one of the closures, they now warm the plastic shives in a jug of hot water before malleting them home (but only on the casks with a screw thread to the shive hole).

I think probrewer regular Tariq has used extra long plas shives & exported cask beer to the US in plas 9's, so he might have some more advice.
Good luck,
Mike.