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So here it is, my Man Cave. I love to check out other peoples setups and get ideas and such, so I thought I'd put some pics up for others to do the same.
A brief history, I do remodeling, and finished off the basement about 2 years ago. I had a kegerator previously, but knew nothing of homebrew. I built the bar with plans to have guiness, bass, boulevard wheat, & miller lite on tap, and custom built the bar to accomodate the taps and have a keezer underneath. Funds & time ran short, so this area has just been a second kitchen/wet bar ever since.
At Christmas, a buddy received a LHBS gift card, so he brewed a batch in January. He turned me on to it, and it got the ball rolling again, but with new plans. The plan now was to have 6 beers on tap, plus 3 primary and 3 secondary fermenters to keep things flowing.
Here's the fermentation area. Unplanned at the time of construction, but was pretty happy when it fit 6 carboys perfectly. Three 6.5G in back, three 5G in front. The way it's setup, I can roll the keezer forward, rack the secondaries straight down into the kegs, then rack the primaries forward into the secondaries, and then it's time to brew 3 more!
The keezer holds six 5G cornies & two 5lb co2 tanks (only one co2 tank hooked up at the time). It runs 3 kegs per tank with shutoffs & tees setup to run all six kegs from either tank, or a third outside tank should both run out. I also used a ranco digital temp controller, seen mounted to on the left side of the keezer.
There are 2" pvc lines that run up through the keezer lid to the coffin I built. It is actually 1.5" sch40 with 2" sch80 pipe used to make sleeves so I can slide them up and roll the keezer forward. I planned to put quick disconnects on the lines here, but after my order arrived I realized I had only ordered the female ends. Duh. There is enough excess line that I can still roll it forward without a problem. The left is with the sleeve slid up, the right is with it closed.
Sorry, not the best pic.
These lines run up to the taps, which I built from red oak and gave 5 coats of high gloss polyurethane. Try to ignore the burn marks on the wood.
That's what happens when you loan your mitre saw out and it comes back with missing teeth (never again). None can be seen with the lid on though, so it's all good. The inside is lined with 1/4" thick moisture barrier styrofoam (typically used behing vinyl siding and has moisture barrier front and back)
Inside I used two 50mm 12v DC computer CPU cooling fans and made a plate from a scrap piece of aluminum to mount them to. They are powered by a 9v DC power supply (old cordless phone adapter) This flows the air up/down the lines from the keezer to keep the beer cold up to the taps.
At this point only 3 lines are connected.
Here's a shot of the coffin. Again, not the best pic, but hey, this was all taken with a cell phone.
And this is the entire setup from behind the bar.
And that's it. Sorry for the extremely long post. Hopefully it helps get someone else moving on their project. When time permits, I'll put together a page with more detailed information on my site.
Cheers!
A brief history, I do remodeling, and finished off the basement about 2 years ago. I had a kegerator previously, but knew nothing of homebrew. I built the bar with plans to have guiness, bass, boulevard wheat, & miller lite on tap, and custom built the bar to accomodate the taps and have a keezer underneath. Funds & time ran short, so this area has just been a second kitchen/wet bar ever since.
At Christmas, a buddy received a LHBS gift card, so he brewed a batch in January. He turned me on to it, and it got the ball rolling again, but with new plans. The plan now was to have 6 beers on tap, plus 3 primary and 3 secondary fermenters to keep things flowing.
Here's the fermentation area. Unplanned at the time of construction, but was pretty happy when it fit 6 carboys perfectly. Three 6.5G in back, three 5G in front. The way it's setup, I can roll the keezer forward, rack the secondaries straight down into the kegs, then rack the primaries forward into the secondaries, and then it's time to brew 3 more!
The keezer holds six 5G cornies & two 5lb co2 tanks (only one co2 tank hooked up at the time). It runs 3 kegs per tank with shutoffs & tees setup to run all six kegs from either tank, or a third outside tank should both run out. I also used a ranco digital temp controller, seen mounted to on the left side of the keezer.
There are 2" pvc lines that run up through the keezer lid to the coffin I built. It is actually 1.5" sch40 with 2" sch80 pipe used to make sleeves so I can slide them up and roll the keezer forward. I planned to put quick disconnects on the lines here, but after my order arrived I realized I had only ordered the female ends. Duh. There is enough excess line that I can still roll it forward without a problem. The left is with the sleeve slid up, the right is with it closed.
Sorry, not the best pic.
These lines run up to the taps, which I built from red oak and gave 5 coats of high gloss polyurethane. Try to ignore the burn marks on the wood.
That's what happens when you loan your mitre saw out and it comes back with missing teeth (never again). None can be seen with the lid on though, so it's all good. The inside is lined with 1/4" thick moisture barrier styrofoam (typically used behing vinyl siding and has moisture barrier front and back)
Inside I used two 50mm 12v DC computer CPU cooling fans and made a plate from a scrap piece of aluminum to mount them to. They are powered by a 9v DC power supply (old cordless phone adapter) This flows the air up/down the lines from the keezer to keep the beer cold up to the taps.
At this point only 3 lines are connected.
Here's a shot of the coffin. Again, not the best pic, but hey, this was all taken with a cell phone.
And this is the entire setup from behind the bar.
And that's it. Sorry for the extremely long post. Hopefully it helps get someone else moving on their project. When time permits, I'll put together a page with more detailed information on my site.
Cheers!