Tap Tower on TOP of keezer?

I just bought a chest freezer and I want to put my taps on this weekend. However, I am unsure why all the keezers I see have been converted to have a collar in which all the taps reside. Is there a reason I should not drill into the top?

I imagine it might be a support issue, but I could easily put a wood veneer on the top easier that a collar around the entire cooler. Thought?

It'll work...
One of the reasons is that cold air sinks, so it's easier to keep your lines cold when they're in the freezer as opposed to above it.

Another reason I can think of is that when you add weight to the top, it makes it a pain to work in there without the lid constantly wanting to close on your head.

It's certainly do-able though and plenty of people have done it.

Ok, great. Thank you! Will a few inches make such a difference? Do you think I'll have foaming issues?

You might have a little bit of foam on the first pour, but other than that you should be ok. If it becomes a problem, you can easilly add a small fan to keep some of that cold air in your tower.

Then again though, I still get more foam on my first pour also and my kegerator is a standard fridge with the taps going through the door. I believe this happens regardless because my taps are still room temp and it takes a little bit before they chill down to the temp of the beer.

To open the keezer you have to pull it away from the wall and that can be a major PITA. I had casters on mine but it was so heavy when full it was still tough to move it.
I fixed the cooling issue by putting 3" PVC pipes in and out and attaching a computer fan to blow cold air through the tower.
After a year I took the tower off and built a nice collar.

I've found, after being a kegerator owner and builder for 15+ years, that reigning in your expectations of foam is the best way to fix foamy beer. Basically, you can build a cheap tower cooler, or buy one off ebay and that will help tremendously, and lengthening your lines for decreased pressure at the tap are your only two options that will work for certain. Both are quite easy. A length of 1" copper pipe holds my beer lines, extends a few inches into the fridge/freezer section, where a copper T connects to the OUT of my tower cooler, and the other is open and the beer lines flow into it. The copper gets very cold, and holds the beer in the tower at lower temps.

Anway, I'm rambling, but I've spent far too many hours of my life working on my kegerator.

The biggest risk to putting a tower on a chest freezer (other then the risk of the lid falling on your head when you're working in it) is that you'll forget to pull the keezer-ator away from the wall before you lift your lid and your tower will damage the wall, or the wall will damage your tower, or both. Being mindful is key. Casters would help too fwiw, because then pulling it away from the wall would be pretty easy.

The biggest issue is opening the lid, if you have a place to put it without a wall behind it you won't have a problem.

The first time you open it and all of your tap handles hit the wall, open and beer pours out you will not be a happy brewer...

As others have said, the biggest issue is opening a lid. I've never had a problem with foaming but I've always used longer beer lines. The first version of my keezer was on casters, but as corkybstewart said, it got too heavy to move when it was full, especially on a carpeted floor. My solution to that is putting the entire keezer in a built-in cabinet and using heavy duty drawer glides (see link in my sig). Using a collar was never an option for me.

I have a five tap freezer. I made a tower for the taps with plywood and put some thin roll insulation inside the tower. The tower is 30 x 8 and 14 in high. I cut a 6 x 24 inch hole in the lid and the plywood top. The lines stay cool but not cold. I have not had a foaming problem.
My freezer is far enough from the wall so it does not hit.
The top is heavy. It has 5/8 in plywood on top and 1/2 under as we'll as trim and tile.

Awesome info. Thanks guys.

I'd love see a pic of the copper tubing so I can envision how you attached it to the tower sounds like a great idea to me.

I have copper tubing on my two beer lines going into my tower. I slid the beer lines through the straight copper tubing when setting up my keezer. I put a couple of wraps of electrical tape around the two copper tubes near the bottom of the tubes just to hold them together. The "stick-tion" (technical term) of the beer lines holds the copper tubes in place. I did not attach the copper tubes anywhere inside the tower.

Here ya go: First pic is from the top, second pic is inside the cabinet looking back toward the cooling plate and tower cooler fan. That's the ebay model, but you can make your own for cheap too if you're inclined. Also, a more elegant setup IMHO is to connect all copper from the cooling fan to the tower, but this works fine for me, nobody but me sees the inside of the kegerator anyway ;-) :





Edit: If you did this on a keezer, you might want to make sure you can easily disconnect the T from the down tube, or just skip the fan part altogether. If you get the downtube into the keezer enough it'll cool down the lines pretty well.

Thanks so much guys. I'm going to try this I think. Looks fairly easy and effective. Nice work and thanks for the photos!

Guys,
I read your comments about how the taps would hit the wall. Am I missing something? Wouldn’t it be fixed if we hinged the freezer doors on the side opposite to the wall?

Sure - if you think then having to heft kegs up and over an open freezer lid is "fixed"...