Broken tap hammer

 I am not sure if “hammer” is the correct terminology (nor am I sure about any of the terms listed below, but it’s what I call the parts), but the part of the tap faucet that hooks to the tap handle and makes the beer flow broke on one of my taps.  This was without a doubt an unexpected occurrence, but it did happen. 

It all started when I wanted to clean my tap faucet out because I had not used it in a while.  I started by trying to remove the tap handle from the faucet and tap handle would not budge.  Initially I was concerned that the tap handle would break (not fully grasping the potential of the faucet breaking) and I took it gentle.  After a while I realized that it was not going to budge so I started to hoss the “cap” (as seen in my makeshift diagram below) in the opposite direction of the tap handle (that is directly connected to the hammer) and eventually it started to turn.  Not good.

Overview of terms

Once the hammer was spinning, I knew something was wrong.  From that point I had to focus on getting the cap away from the faucet to get inside and see what was up.  Sure enough as you can see from the picture at the top, I broke the end of the hammer that hooks into the stopper.  I also damaged the stopper to a point of no return as well.

The good news is that the parts for this (especially in bronze) were cheap.  I was able to fix my tap for around $12 at my LHBS.  As much as the Internet is great, you can’t beat going into a place with your parts and putting things together to make sure everything fits! 

So now its back to flowing with new parts and all is well on the keggerator front! 

Cheers.