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Finally get to add my. Very inspired by others here.

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This past weekend I brewed 4 beers, a hard cider and a batch of Sprecher root beer for my buddies graduation party. I was concerned that it would be difficult to chill all 6 kegs and properly label the beers without the lines getting all tangled up and confusing the guests.

My buddy's parents have a small beef ranch and had a spare stock tank for the cattle to drink from. After a good cleaning and sanitizing, I was easily able to fit my six kegs plus 20# CO2 tank in the stock tank with enough room for 2-3 more kegs (more if CO2 tank is placed outside). We filled the stock tank with kegs in it with cold well water over night to pre-chill the beer and drained some out and added about 60# of ice the next morning for the party; worked great!

Now what was I supposed to do about the picnic taps? We setup a banquet table over the kegs and had a front bar to the left making an 'L' shape with 2 half barrels of BMC with 1" holes drilled through the top for my sanke tower taps. It dawned on me that a scrap piece of 1"x3" could be drilled and made into a tap-tower of sorts.

Evenly spaced 1/2" holes with side legs on the 1"x3" would be perfect! Touched by Midas....a quick coat of gold spray paint made the crappy looking scrap wood look great. I disconnected the picnic taps and ran the tubing through the holes; I found that once the tap was reassembled, the bulge of the tubing was the right size for a press-fit into the 1/2" holes creating a perfect secure fit that the taps did not fall out. I wrote labels of the beers on top of the wood to identify the order and made custom beer labels made by <http://www.beerlabelizer.com> hung in front of the bar.

The party was a great success and everyone loved the homebrew, my personal Honey Wheat was the biggest hit and tapped out within a few hours. In the third picture you can kind of see the stock tank in the lower-right corner with the 6 Corny kegs and CO2 tank.

The second picture is the lineup...
1. Hard Apple Cider
2. Cream Ale
3. Honey Wheat
4. Red Ale
5. Cascadian Dark Ale

With a couple of my buddies and I with Manufacturing Engineering degrees, and a few hours we created a pretty nice bar setup that received many compliments. If any of you are having a party and need a somewhat professional setup, this was a very cheap and easy way to share great beer with friends and family.

And if anyone happens to like this idea and implement it, I would love to hear from you and see your setup along with a picture. Hopefully someone with more time and crafting skills can improve upon our idea and create something spectacular!

BTW, this was my first gig; I have been brewing since 2006 and have never made a beer for a party or anyone else, only personal consumption (and friends who come over). It was a lot of fun brewing all of these at once within the short 6 week notice I was given.

Cheers!

Phil

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First time post. A Google search a few months back led to one of the keezer build threads. At that point, I hadn't thought of using a chest freezer and didn't know what people meant when they were referring to a collar. A few days of reading up led to a trip to Conn's, Home Depot and my LHBS. Made for a fun and easy week-end project that I'm finally getting around to posting.

Collar is 1x8 pine with locking miter joints on the corners with 1x12 melamine shelving surrounding that, also lock mitered. The lock miters were overkill, but my router table was already set up for the joints, so why not? Top is sealed to the freezer with silicone caulk.

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Top edge of the collar has several strips of melamine edging to give it a finished look. You can see the results just behind the taps.

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Just saw the drywall-pan-as-drip-tray idea earlier in this thread and will make that mod in the next few days. Been using a busted fermentation bucket on the floor up until now.

Unfortunately, the Texas Kolsch and Honey Hibiscus Wit on the middle two taps are both kicked. :( On the up side, there's a Texas Blonde and an Imperial Agave Wit in secondary and primary, respectively to replace them. :ban: The other taps are currently a Double Chocolate Stout and a Belgian Trappist Dubbel.

Still left on the project list are the BMBF (I read that WHOLE thread last night) and a fermentation chamber if I can figure out where to put it and find a cheap fridge on craigslist.
 
"...to keep the wife happy..."

Lucky man. I've been trying to my wife into letting me get a nitro setup. So far, the answer is no...even though she loves black and tans and blacksmiths and just about anything else made with Guinness...
 
I finally got around to making myself some tap handles and they turned out so well that I just had to show them off. I wanted to make some tree branch tap handles to go with my Life & Limb themed kegerator, so I headed over to my parent's house and grabbed some dead branches from off the ground. I cut them to length, then drilled & tapped the threads, stained, burned my fake brewery name in, and coated with polyurethane.

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I finally finished mine and here it is! Key features are:
  • It has four taps, all Perlicks.
  • It has a CO2 regulator for each line.
  • The taps are enclosed in a cabinet.
  • The inside of the door panels are chalk boards.
  • The lid has lift-assist gas springs for easy opening.
  • It has a Love Controls temp control unit.
  • Beer comes out of it. :)

Here's a link to my thread about it, and here are a couple pics.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-kegerator-255232/

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I'm looking at doing something similar... the taps through the side that is... but I've heard the issue with that is possibly hitting a coolant line running through the side. Was there anything you did to avoid this?
 
Here's mine, i'm still fairly new in the quest to become handy so I wanted to keep my first keezer nice n' simple. 4 taps coming through 2 towers, with room for 2 kegs of lagering or carbonating beer, painted with good ol' chalkboard paint. Currently it is decorated for the 4th of July party we had last Sunday, it's so nice to have beer on tap. Thanks to everyone on here for the great ideas, this thread was the only resource I even had to use.


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And the inside....



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Here's mine, i'm still fairly new in the quest to become handy so I wanted to keep my first keezer nice n' simple. 4 taps coming through 2 towers, with room for 2 kegs of lagering or carbonating beer, painted with good ol' chalkboard paint. Currently it is decorated for the 4th of July party we had last Sunday, it's so nice to have beer on tap. Thanks to everyone on here for the great ideas, this thread was the only resource I even had to use.

What size model chest freezer is this? So this fits 6 ball lock kegs on the floor? Looks great! When is the next party?:mug:
 
Here is my setup. Whirlpool 15 cu. ft chest freezer. Perlick 575ss taps. 5 lb co2 tank. Threeway secondary regulator. Home made drip tray. Pint glass rack made by the father in law. :mug:

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physast - I don't know what that freezer is, I got it for free from my boss after we got a new reach-in freezer in our kitchen, I just got kind of lucky with the size. It not only fits 6 kegs, but they fit so perfectly it's like this freezer was made just to be converted. I do know it's a kenmore, and its pretty damn old.
 
fixer2u,

Beautiful setup....my buddy just built a similar 4 faucet setup and I eventually plan to do the same.

One question though......why all the extra hose?
 
Here is my current one. I am building a new one to replace this out of a 5ft chest freezer I found on craiglists for $50.00 :rockin:

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Looks great, better than not having cold beer on tap. I'm working on a 5cf Craigslist score myself. Been using it with picnic taps and a Ranco controller, but I'm working on a collar and should have it on by the end of the day.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by wilmh
fixer2u,

Beautiful setup....my buddy just built a similar 4 faucet setup and I eventually plan to do the same.

One question though......why all the extra hose?

Thanks!

The one with the extra hose is a Rootbeer I am keeping at 30psi. Using 30' of 3/16" tubing was the only I found to keep the foam under control. The other one with longer tubing is a Hefe I am keeping at around 18psi. That one has 15' of 3/16" tubing, and pours very nice.
 
fixer2u,

Beautiful setup....my buddy just built a similar 4 faucet setup and I eventually plan to do the same.

One question though......why all the extra hose?

Thanks!

The one with the extra hose is a Rootbeer I am keeping at 30psi. Using 30' of 3/16" tubing was the only I found to keep the foam under control. The other one with longer tubing is a Hefe I am keeping at around 18psi. That one has 15' of 3/16" tubing, and pours very nice.
 
I thought I'd show off my current setup.
2 5-gal cornies + 1 3-gal corny in a 5CF Keezer
hand-turned pulls, and a digital readout of number of pints left on each keg on the front.
I've got a nitro/stout tap ready to install, and am planning to go up to a larger freezer soon too, but if I add more taps, I'll need to rework the display completely too, so that is a rather large project. I've been planning on building a cabinet facade to hide the white freezer, but have been holding off until I get the new freezer.

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Real nice Axes! As a woodturner myself, I can appreciate the turned handles.

I'm not sure if I ever posted my finished project in this thread, so here it is. I picked up this Beverage-Air cooler from a restaurant surplus place without a tower. I had a tower custom fabricated by ACU Metal Fab and added a Love controller in place of the stock analog thermostat.

All the handles were turned or forged by me. I'll let you figure out which is which ;)

I've got 9, 5-gallon Corny kegs in there now and there's room for at least 2 more. Enjoy!

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-Joe
 
I thought I'd show off my current setup.
2 5-gal cornies + 1 3-gal corny in a 5CF Keezer
hand-turned pulls, and a digital readout of number of pints left on each keg on the front.
I've got a nitro/stout tap ready to install, and am planning to go up to a larger freezer soon too, but if I add more taps, I'll need to rework the display completely too, so that is a rather large project. I've been planning on building a cabinet facade to hide the white freezer, but have been holding off until I get the new freezer.

How does the digital readout sense the number of pints left? Do you have a thread on HBT about it?
 
Just finished my keezer build, I got a free freezer from a friend (7.2 cu ftMagic Chef), which i sanded down and painted with chalkboard paint. I luckily found some old school perlicks on ebay for $10 a piece, got 4 of them in case i expand, and a kit from kegconnection. I'll probably add on to my regulator to make it a dual body so I can carb a keg and serve 2 at the same time.

Like my drip tray?

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Inside View
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Just finished my keezer build, I got a free freezer from a friend (7.2 cu ftMagic Chef), which i sanded down and painted with chalkboard paint. I luckily found some old school perlicks on ebay for $10 a piece, got 4 of them in case i expand, and a kit from kegconnection. I'll probably add on to my regulator to make it a dual body so I can carb a keg and serve 2 at the same time.

Like my drip tray?

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Inside View
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I like the sock "drip tray"
 
How does the digital readout sense the number of pints left? Do you have a thread on HBT about it?

I'll have to make a thread about it sometime. Basically, I pulled the load-cells out of digital bathroom scales, hooked up some electronics to interface with a microcontroller, and send the output to the lcd screen. In effect it is a glorified digital scale, but with the output calibrated in pints rather than pounds (of course, 'a pint's a pound the world around' so assuming you could adjust for the empty-keg weight, you could save the hassle and just look at the readout of a standard bathroom scale.

Right now I have a single display for all 3 kegs, but if I expand my setup, I'm thinking of having each unit be self-contained so it is easy to make it work for as many/few taps as you have. Then I could provide instructions or kits. The whole thing isn't very expensive to build, with the scales being most of the total cost. If I could find inexpensive load-cells, it would probably be possible to build them at ~$10 per tap.
 
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