Freezers and Kegging...thinking out loud ;]

I'm new to kegging, about to keg my first batch after a week cold crash. Just planning for the road ahead and looking at chest freezers for conditioning/serving. I've got a one tap kegerator now:



With towers being $100+ I'm thinking about just not upgrading that and putting that money into a keezer build. I'm not sure how many taps I want but I'm confused mainly because I wasn't sure if I had to have every keg hooked up to a active gas line to carb for a week or two...or do I just pressurize the keg once then as long as I have no leaks or purge can I just leave it unhooked to carb in the freezer for the week?

Thanks for the clarity, my brain is mush from second guessing myself. :rockin:

Invest in a three or four way manifold, some extra gas line and gray ball-lock hookups. Then you can hook everything up to one tank and turn on and off the gas to each keg as you desire.

If you only want to stick with one gas line, go ahead. You can force carb a keg in 30 hours at 30PSI in the chiller. disconnect and force carb the next keg. Many of my charged kegs in the chiller are not hooked to gas all the time. I just reattach the gas line and pop some in when there is not enough pressure to push the beer.

I have a Danby kegerator made in communist China and it is POS; compressor growns so it is on last leg.

For me, a freezerless fridge would probably give me better utility for non-brew stuff but the chest freezer does look tempting.

So if you install a freezer thermostat in a new chest freezer unit, that voids any warranty; right?

I believe the new energy-saving units, both fridges and chest freezers run on much less electric than older units. So you might save some inital dough on an old unit someone else no longer wants but your electric bill will take a big hit.

Ok, but if I wanted to use the set and forget carb @ 12psi for 1-2 weeks I would have to leave the kegs hooked up to gas for the entire time? Just seeing what would happen say if I had 4 manifold going to 4 full kegs ready to serve on my 4 tap keezer. Say later on I end up wanting to add a 5th keg to the keezer to condition and carb only...do I have to leave the 5th keg hooked to gas the entire 1-2 weeks to carb or just let it take 12psi, unhook and sit till there's room on the tap line.

Thanks again!

You need CO2 to be going to kegs for carbonation. If you want to go all RONCO "set it and forget it" style you need to keep gas to the keg at 10PSI until it's carbed.

Once it's carbed I think you can pull it and put it in the closet for awhile (actually you could closet it after just pushing 30PSI in and venting the O2 but it's not going to be carbed, so when you put it back on tap you'll need to either force-carb or leave it on 10PSI for a week or so).

Grats on kegging, I think it makes the whole brewing thing a lot more cool!