BeerPirate
Active Member
I haven't posted on here in a long while but I just got back into homebrewing after closing on our house this last fall. I decided it was time to get rid of my old kegerator:
It had 12 years on it in my possession and god only knows how many before that. It was a sad day to see it go but it needed to be put out of it's misery. Seals were shot, it accumulated condensation like crazy an it was loud as hell not to mention really inefficient.
So I decided to build a new one.
My living room backs right up to the furnace room downstairs. We already have the tv on the wall an spend a ton of time down there, I figured beer would be the next logical step.
Here's what I decided on:
I picked up a 9 cubic foot freezer from lowes and started with a 2x6 collar.
I then added the 1x8 on the outside to keep it from moving around too much.
after putting the lid back on:
I turned my attention to the taps.
I drilled my holes and put it on the wall for a test fit.
On the other side of the wall, inside the furnace room we were met with this:
The previous owners had finished the back side of this wall with an old hollow core door so some work with a keyhole saw opened it up. You can also see that I hit a stud dead center on my leftmost hole, that worked out fine as I have one shank that is a little longer than the others.
So you'll notice now that the taps are quite a bit taller than what the collar would end up being and I'm not keen on leaving the lines exposed so I brainstormed and put together this:
And inside that box is foil and bubble wrap insulation:
I then put weather stripping on the back of the collar and pressure fitted it up to my cabinet.
I then used a 2.5" hole saw and cut through both the collar and the cabinet box and ran my lines through that.
In this shot you can see that I ran my CO2 line in through the collar and also where I have the temp probe hanging.
Now in here you can see the lines hooked up, the box allows for the excess line to be coiled up for proper line balancing.
My only concern so far is keeping the box chilled, I think I'm going to run a small pc fan to move air from the freezer up into the box to keep the lines cold. As it stands now, pouring a beer seems to keep things cooled off adequately and I haven't had any foaming issues. I am however getting some nasty vinyl flavors in the first oz or so out of the tap, I hope that goes away.
Here is a final shot of the taps on the wall after the plate was stained. I need to figure out a drip tray but a towel has worked fine so far.
Thanks for looking!
It had 12 years on it in my possession and god only knows how many before that. It was a sad day to see it go but it needed to be put out of it's misery. Seals were shot, it accumulated condensation like crazy an it was loud as hell not to mention really inefficient.
So I decided to build a new one.
My living room backs right up to the furnace room downstairs. We already have the tv on the wall an spend a ton of time down there, I figured beer would be the next logical step.
Here's what I decided on:
I picked up a 9 cubic foot freezer from lowes and started with a 2x6 collar.
I then added the 1x8 on the outside to keep it from moving around too much.
after putting the lid back on:
I turned my attention to the taps.
I drilled my holes and put it on the wall for a test fit.
On the other side of the wall, inside the furnace room we were met with this:
The previous owners had finished the back side of this wall with an old hollow core door so some work with a keyhole saw opened it up. You can also see that I hit a stud dead center on my leftmost hole, that worked out fine as I have one shank that is a little longer than the others.
So you'll notice now that the taps are quite a bit taller than what the collar would end up being and I'm not keen on leaving the lines exposed so I brainstormed and put together this:
And inside that box is foil and bubble wrap insulation:
I then put weather stripping on the back of the collar and pressure fitted it up to my cabinet.
I then used a 2.5" hole saw and cut through both the collar and the cabinet box and ran my lines through that.
In this shot you can see that I ran my CO2 line in through the collar and also where I have the temp probe hanging.
Now in here you can see the lines hooked up, the box allows for the excess line to be coiled up for proper line balancing.
My only concern so far is keeping the box chilled, I think I'm going to run a small pc fan to move air from the freezer up into the box to keep the lines cold. As it stands now, pouring a beer seems to keep things cooled off adequately and I haven't had any foaming issues. I am however getting some nasty vinyl flavors in the first oz or so out of the tap, I hope that goes away.
Here is a final shot of the taps on the wall after the plate was stained. I need to figure out a drip tray but a towel has worked fine so far.
Thanks for looking!