Dead Space Between the Kegs in a Keezer

For years, I've eyed the rarely used gaps between kegs in my keezer and thought "I should do something with that space." Sometimes I place a large beer bottle in the gap but for the most part, the space goes unused.

I typically use my compressor hump for storing beer bottles and the basket above it to hold hops. Meanwhile, I have several 3 gallon cornies that would fit on top of the hump.

I'm thinking of claiming the compressor hump for small kegs and storing my bottles and hops in the gaps between the kegs. My ideas is cut a piece of 4" PVC pipe to keg height and then cap one end. The PVC tube could then be filled with bottles and hops and placed in the gaps. It should be fairly easy to access and haul in and out as needed.

What do you think? Has anyone come up with a novel way to use this space?

I use the in-betweens for bottles for sure. But only the ones I want to forget about. I keep another fridge for the rotational stuff.

I would not use the in-betweens for hops. YMMV, but I keep my keezer at a "too warm for hops" 40*F. Hops need to be frozen, the colder the better, to avoid losses of their heavenly compounds.

I think you are on the right track tho'. The more mass kept in the freezer the fewer cycles the compressor will run to keep it at temp.

Wonder what'd happen if the chest were filled with ice-pack goo?

Edit: Maybe even fill the "toobs" with sand (water would work but might get funky over time) just to increase the mass in the freezer.

Awesom idea about the pvc. I'm gonna try it out

yes very good idea, i have a peice from an abandoned project I may try out. Bending to floor level to retrieve a bottle was a PITA but elimating that is good thinking. What about some sort of divider since the tube would be tall enough for 2-3 bombers? Maybe a round plexiglass or even plywood cutout between bottles. Really utulize that space.

It definitely makes sense to store as much cold beer stuff in a keezer as possible --- even when it's not Earth Day!

I'm not quite sure how to best use the space of the beer tube. My thoughts would be to interlay bottles.. base to base, top to top. I think that would get the most. Perhaps 4" is not the best size. I have mix of keg sizes (3g., 5g., 10g.) and both pin lock and ball lock. I need to move things around and get some measurements.

Two things I would like to do:

1) For safety, drill a few screws into the cap that reach the pipe. I'd hate to pull out a tube and have a cap pop off. There goes my 4 year old barleywine!

2) I received this suggestion. Drill some holes in the base to allow any precipitation to escape. I don't know if this will be an issue, but I think the idea is sound.

Is PVC the right material? Has anyone else done anything different?

Thanks for your suggestions.

I would say that if you typically have a lot of kegs packed in, filling the inter-gaps wouldn't be all that beneficial. Yes, you want a lot of thermal mass in there. Just looking at my keezer, I have room for exactly 5 kegs and they'll always in there in some state of fill. It would be killer if the liners could deal with being filled with water because it would help keep everything the same temp much more than air and you'd realize a lot of benefit in thermal mass. On the downside, a half empty keg would start floating.

A thought you might consider for thermal mass if not for extra storage space really is to fill in the cooler with foam between the kegs so when all the kegs are in its a solid block. You oculd put plywood on top so its a flat surface

Az~

Where does a chest freezer get cold? Are all the walls packed with cold makers? does the cold come from all around, or just one wall?

I think you'd want SOME dead space just for air flow, to evenly distribute the heat (or lack of).

I stuff larger bottles between the kegs, but once time I bumped one while moving stuff around and lost a 1 year old 22 oz chocolate stout. Stout everywhere.

Chest freezers pull the heat out through the walls, all of them. The idea of filling the air gaps with something that has a lot of thermal mass is to reduce the effect of heat coming in when the lid is opened. It would be a lot more important if you are a picnic tap user and open the lid every time you pour.

I like the PVC pipe idea. I don't know why you'd want to screw it on there though, just glue it on. You'd have to remember what was in each tube, or put another cap on the top to write what's in that tube. I'd add a couple holes and a rope handle to make it easier to pull out.

bdavanza said:

I stuff larger bottles between the kegs, but once time I bumped one while moving stuff around and lost a 1 year old 22 oz chocolate stout. Stout everywhere.

Click to expand...

How long did you have your head in the freezer sucking out the stout?

rope handle is a great idea. Also think of a way they wont fall over easily if you remove a keg that it was leaning against.

I just read all the posts on the PVC idea and have something to add...

Cut the PVC to the same height as the kegs BUT cut the tubes length-wise and place a cap on the bottom to hold the bottom bottle in place? The other bottles will be held in the tube by the kegs. Also, by doing it this way half of the bottle is exposed to the air in the keezer which should eliminate any condensation problem and the bottles will cool faster. To access a brew all you would have to do is lift the tube out just enough to remove one bottle at a time.

I'll have to check my keezer to see if this idea will work...is there really that much room in a keezer? Not mine, I'm certain.

Dead space and clutter alll but gone.

Before:



Some gaps:






and the clutter (yeast cultures, bottles, sanitizer, wort, hops, etc...)

I bought 5 - 4" PVC caps and a 10' PVC drain. Here are the PVC components.





Construction: I cut the PVC pipe into 2' sections and glued the caps on. I drilled a few holes in the PVC to allow moisture to escape.





5 Keezer Tubes:

Load the tubes and fill the gaps....







Big difference. Notice the clutter is gone, there is still extra space and there are 2 more kegs in the keezer!

Each tube can hold 5 - 12 ounce bottles. I can fit two tubes in the gap areas so this means 10 bottles per gap. I also was able to add all of my other miscellaneous (wort, yeast, hops...).

There is still room for 3 more tubes and a nice gap on the compressor shelf.