The road towards your first draft beer at home is filled with little bits and bobs. Tubing, clamps, faucets and more. This week we take a look a the keg parts checklist and John reviews what’s hopefully his final purchases towards putting the whole system together for that first draft beer.

One nice surprise in this process regards John’s CO2 tank purchase. We discovered that an old homebrew shop of ours now does tank exchanges in the shop. This is great. Up to this point I was taking my empties to a local large commercial specialty gas shop and doing a tank swap with them. Now that this homebrew shop is doing that leg work for us that cuts out the now homebrew related stop. And while I am sure they charge slightly more than what I get my swap for, I’d rather see the money go to an LHBS than a non-homebrew related business.

After the expense of the tank the regulator is the next more expensive piece. John’s new regulator is a typical dual stage style. He was going to get a safety cage like I recommended, but the dude at the shop was confused and he didn’t grab one when he was putting John’s stuff together. Next time John says.

So aside from 7 feet of 3/16th ID tubing, disconnects and hose clamps John is ready to go. Next time we do a keggin video we will put all the stuff together and set the system up. We’ll show how to clean it, and get it ready for beer. Then we’ll show the set and forget carbonation process and how it progresses. All that’s left is for John to figure out what beer to put in there for the first run!

BREW ON!