[Ben Krasnow’s] friends always want him to bring a fire extinguisher to their parties, not for safety reasons, but to quench their thirst. You see, [Ben] uses old fire extinguishers as kegs for his home-brewed beer. They’re not all that different from the Cornelius kegs that most home brew setups use; they’re intended to dispense liquids under pressure, include a liquid exhaust valve, and a gas pressure valve. All he had to do was clean the stainless steel parts extremely well, replace the gaskets, and modify the input valve to use a quick connect for his CO2 system. For good measure he also added a low pressure meter to let you know the carbonation level.
Recently, he installed a home tap system that uses two of the extinguisher kegs. Our favorite part is the refrigerated hose loop that uses a fan to circulate cold air from the fridge all the way to taps.
Sounds like he did all he could to make it safe for potables, which is very cool of him.
Now to find and/or make an appropriately themed drinking vessel!
Well done sir!
That’s brilliant. I must make one for my beer.
Cool. Now I know it’s reasonably safe for pressure bearing applications I need to get one for an air cannon…
It’s too bad he forgot that old fire extinguishers are primarily lead soldered copper sheet. If you do this make sure yours is stainless.
Lead soldered? Uh.. i’m no expert but isn’t lead soft and completely useless for pressure containers? :)
Avrpunk is right. Almost all solder except the new rhos garbage has at least small amounts of lead and the soldered copper fire extinguishers are no exception.
Old copper fire extinguishers might very well have lead in them.
As to whether or not drinking a few cups of beer will cause any harm is another matter. Getting your hands on a copper fire extinguisher would be a fairly expensive proposition as well.
avrpunk, it states in the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph it is made of stainless which is probably one of his main choices for using it. As far as copper soldered with lead hurting you thats up for debate, for a long time all house plumbing was copper soldered with lead based solder.
Finally somebody is doing somthing useful with fire extinguishers!
Old news.
My friends made one of these 5 years ago, except we filled it with sprite and vodka.
It is know as the “Sober Extinguisher.”
Way to go Ben!
The extinguishers are indeed entirely stainless. They were sort of dirty inside because they’d been sitting outside at a metal yard for who knows how long.
Most of the extinguishers do not have a large enough top to actually reach in and clean them out, so if you’re thinking of doing this yourself, look for the ones with a large cap…
i’ve got a couple of those. can’t see myself drinking from it after using it as a gasoline super soaker AKA flamethrower. so much for the days when gas cost less than milk
Copper water pipes can handle 100psi, not bad. Seen some plumbing pressure tests done. It’s thirst extinguisher.
I once made a bong from this exact same extinguisher.
Hahah copper extinguishers. Are you talking about the old Soda-Acid ones? I don’t know where commenters get this stuff sometimes.
ive been planing on doing this for awhile just waiting for our new extinguishers to get in at station but as for the people worried about cleaning them out just pour in a 10% bleach water mix with some stainless steel ball bearings and shake it up the ball bearings will knock anything stuck to the inside loose and bleach will kill anything but when you rinse it our be sure to use the cleanest water you can. oh and don’t pressurize it over 100 psi iv seen threads on one fail because someone wanted to try it at 140psi
Think that fire extinguisher container (empty) used to be a container of toxic chemicals for extinguishing fire. If you recycle the scrap into food container, that would mean something negative to your health. You did what is good for the environment, I salute! It would be good to have the container in the garden for watering plants.