Last night, I stopped at a local bar where I’ve been chatting with the own about brewing and he gave me two empty Petainerkegs. These are five gallon one-way disposable kegs with a sanke coupler, which seems to be a new trend for microbreweries.

I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how best to these a part. Most of the information I found was about removing the sanke coupler from metal kegs so you could clean them and reassemble them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any good instructions about disassembling the coupler, so I ended up cutting the bottom ring off of cap which holds the sanke coupler on the keg.

The plastic is pretty tough so it took a little bit. However, once I managed to cut part of the ring, other parts started breaking off fairly easily. Once most of the ring was broken off, the whole cap and coupler just lifted out.

With the cap removed, I found that the opening to the keg was about the size of a #10 or #10 ½ stopper. At the local brew store, you can pick up a #10 stopper with a hole in it for $2.50. For another $1.50 you can pick up a vapor lock. With those and the Petainerkeg with the cap cut off, you have what looks like it will be a nice, cheap, fermenter.