We are Only Serving From Kegs

[TheWoodYard]

Are we Totally out of our minds for considering to keg everything from our 4Bbl Brewhouse? We are planning to open our brewhouse with 4 fermenters, and 1 BBT which will basically be used to carbonate then keg from. Ideally we will have 4 different house beers but will add the odd experimental one into the mix for seasonals and for special events. To make matters worse, each keg will be washed and filled manually

Has anyone done this before and could shed some light on this? I have a gut feeling that this going to be way too much work and there has to be a better way. I originally wanted to serve from Bbts but our space doesn't permit it. Please, any suggestion is welcome.
Cheers!

[CopperKettle]

This is exactly what we did (3 x 3bbl FVs and a single BBT) for our first year until we added 3 10BBL fermenters and 5 serving tanks. Yes it is a lot of extra work vs just going straight from serving tanks to your own bar, but its what you have to do when you are small and trying to get started on a small budget. Retail margins make all the difference. For wholesale only 3-4bbl at a time isn't worth it to begin with. If your bar is popular you won't bother with 3-4bbl batches long. Stick a few double or even triple batch FVs (10 or 15bbl for you) in before you get serving tanks.

[TheWoodYard]

What did you guys do for a keg filling/cleaning setup? Did you guys just do it all manually? Any tips which will make our lives easier would be great.
Thanks

[hokus]

We started on a home made 4.5bbl system, using plastic tanks for fermenters. Kegged everything and forced carbed each keg in our walk in. You gotta make do with what you can afford if your trying to start small. We now have 4 15bbl uni-tanks and are still using the old plastics for one off beers until we can get more uni's.

Back then we cleaned kegs manually using our converted 10 gallon homebrew setup, but now have a nice premier stainless washer. Its very tedious to do manually and you won't enjoy it after a couple months. Hope you have friends that like free beer for their time

[kugeman]

We have 5 unitanks (4 7bbl and 1 15 bbl) and 2 brites, and keg everything off and serve exclusively from kegs. So it's doable, but it's definitely more work than having serving tanks. But I can't imagine doing it without having a keg washer. If you can scrap together the money, even for a primitive keg washer, it will more than pay for itself in the man hours you're going to save. Or if you're handy enough, maybe you can build your own? A keg washer doesn't have to all that complicated to get the job done. Maybe someone on Probrewer can share some pictures/plans with you...

[CopperKettle]

there are several threads out there for home-made keg washing setups

we have a premier stainless manual keg washer and it works great.

[ChesterBrew]

http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?16170-Home-Grown-keg-washer-set-up

[Bull_MAC]

Serving Tank

If you can afford it, does it makes sense to have serving tanks and keg off those when needed? Say 14bbl transfers to 7bbl serving and you keg the remaining 7bbl? When you are first starting off, would it make sense to just use serving tanks until you begin to get outside accounts in which you will need to keg? Thanks.