Show us your portable travel kegerator/cooler.

63belair said:

Here's a question for you guys:

For those of you using faucets, do you use perlicks or cheapo's?

I ask because I'm thinking of building one and while I love the perlicks on my Kegerator at home, maybe they are overkill for a single day/weekend use device? I would imagine stuck faucets wouldn't be an issue with the short duration high intensity use of a portable Kegerator?

Thoughts or suggestions? If you were to start over and build one from scratch, what would you do?

Also, I'm thinking of building a trash can style.

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My faucets are cheap-o's. Since it's a one or two day thing, the faucets don't have time to stick!

I just upgraded to a Perlick since it was less than $30 with shipping. While it is a little overkill for single day use on occasion, usually at the end of the day when I do use it I'm a little tipsy and would rather not have to deal with the faucet. With the Perlick, it can sit for a week or longer and then just rinsed out with a little Starsan and all is good. With the old faucet I would have to take it apart before I could use it, not a huge deal, but my time is valuable to me, it makes it worth it to spend the $30.

Here are both of mine.
1. is a dual set-up for 2.5 gallon kegs.
2. is a single 5 gallon set-up.

2 is awesome! I love the idea of turning that style of cooler upright. Awesome!

those of you using the round coolers for yor 2.5-3gal cornies... are these 5gal coolers or 10 gal coolers?

Mine is a 5 gallon that I bought at Walmart. Somewhere in this thread are pictures or my setup and build.

Here's my somewhat portable kegerator. It's not as mobile as others but it serves it's purpose. I wanted something that I could take somewhere and park it for a few days but was very compact during transport. I can get 2 1/2 bbls or 5 cornies in it. I'm working on a wheeled base for it so it can move around (it's not fun trying to relocate it when full).

It looks like an EG-6 Power Droid from Star Wars.

Here's mine

djelemenohpee said:

Here's mine

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That's awesome, what's the inside look like?

DubBrew said:

That's awesome, what's the inside look like?

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Here's the inside

Here is a couple i built this week, going to take them to the race this weekend

Here is my jockey box. It uses a cold plate inside and a jac pak for CO2.

I have a converted 5.2 Gal Whiskey barrrel that I have turned into a 2 tap jockey box. Here is my album. http://imgur.com/a/AHD7q#0

Zincktank said:

I have a converted 5.2 Gal Whiskey barrrel that I have turned into a 2 tap jockey box. Here is my album. http://imgur.com/a/AHD7q#0

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That's awesome! Great idea.

do you put ice in that barrel? Does it leak?

OK. We dragged this beast all the way to Marathon Key from Tampa so we could have draft beer. Son of a ***** if the camp wardens wouldn't let us have an outside appliance.



Soooo we ran to home depot and built ourselves this kegerator in a couple hours. We still use it for parties.



The bottom is a 120 qt igloo cooler. There's 1.5 of insulation on the inside all around and it's back filled with great stuff. The box is concrete framing plywood and it's just screwed right into the cooler on all sides. The park rangers were really impressed and we were drunk, so it's all good. Since then it's made it back to the keys every year since.

Cheers!

Here is mine. Just finished it. I was inspired by Juan Moore's.

JoeCap09 said:

Here is mine. Just finished it. I was inspired by Juan Moore's.

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Looks great! Nice job.

Here is or portable bar, it only holds a few kegs but it does the job when we go camping...

^^^^ That's a nice setup!! How do you keep everything cold?

Monster Mash,
...when you go camping....? I assume it's beer camp

We got a coldroom for free so we cut the walls up and made boxes out of it. Each cold box holds 5 kegs and we have 3 of them.



Here's another pic of the front.

That's unreal, if you never posted pictures I wouldn't have believed you!

CRZ said:

That's unreal, if you never posted pictures I wouldn't have believed you!

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I still don't believe him

P.S. that thing needs it's own thread!

Well, Monster Mash's post is a tough act to follow. But in the end mine happily served 3 gallons of beer to some great friends, so I'm not (too) ashamed of mine. I utilized the cup holder to hold the CO2 tank, and for now am satisfied using a picnic tap.

Jaysus said:

I still don't believe him

P.S. that thing needs it's own thread!

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Yeah, and he's gonna be sorry he ever built that thing. Doesn't he know 13 is an unlucky number?

kscarrington said:

Well, Monster Mash's post is a tough act to follow. But in the end mine happily served 3 gallons of beer to some great friends, so I'm not (too) ashamed of mine. I utilized the cup holder to hold the CO2 tank, and for now am satisfied using a picnic tap.

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Sheeet! NEVER feel ashamed! n Just wish your paying job WAS brewing, or building such beauties as that!

I like your rig - it's compact and most importantly FUNctional!

The absolute WORST portabe setup I have EVER seen was the one I built due to an emergency for a New Years party...It was a standard pony keg bucket of ice holding 2 - 5 gallon cornies, wrapped in a wet towel to keep them cool in the bed of my pickup in Tampa, FL;

The Co2 was a 1 liter(?) paintball gun canister, rigged to a shortened piece of regular orange home depot type air compressor line so it would fit onto the single guage air compressor regulator that STARTED at 10 PSI, then fed to a corny pin lock line to the keg, and the 'tap' was a cobra type that originally was part of a college keg tap - the kind that pumps air (shudder) into the keg.

We managed to kill all 10 gallons, marveling at the result of sheer determination and ingenuity.
My brother-in-law's eyes widened in disbelief with every beer he poured, and he couldn't stop laughing with joy!

Screw MacGyver! I am MacKGuyBEER! We ALL are here it seems.

Haha. Just loaded up the truck for my trash can kegerator's first use/ road trip. Hopefully I strapped it in good enough. We shall see!

DrHops said:

To COLLINH, it's a 3 gallon corny. I thought about converting it to fit a 5 gallon, but since I have two 3 gallon cronies and a 2 1/2 gallon Chinese one I figure why bother. It works great, Walmart sells the cooler for $30 and it needs next to no ice. I actually use keglove ice blankets which keep it ice cold all day long out in the heat. The other advantage is that it's a direct tap unit, there is no beer line to clean out the next day.

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Hey Doc!
what sort of serving pressure does the direct tap need? does it seem to foam more or less than a regular longer lined setup?

And, what is the 'gallonage' of that cooler? Looks very clean, and neat! I like it a lot!

Mirabotz, it only needs 2-3 psi to push the beer, and no, no more foam than a normal glass of beer. I love it, as a matter of fact I'm probably going to use it Christmas Eve in the backyard next to my hot tub, why bring a pitcher when you can bring 3 gallons!

This is one I built. Ice and cornies go into the inner can w/ice. 5# CO2 tank goes in a corner between the inner can and the outer can. I insulated it with 650,000 packing peanuts recycled from work. It worked great, we ran out of beer days before the ice melted.

Got the idea from BYO Dec. 2012 issue.

Copied from a guy on here. His was called the "chit wagon". I'll be putting in the second tap next summer.

My old trashcan tapper isn't portable enough for my liking so I've been building a new system on a lightweight hand truck with stair rails from HD

I'll post some pictures when I get it finished up in the next few weeks.

I have a question though. Does anybody else have issues with excessive foaming when transporting kegs moderate distances? I've had a hell of a time with it. My typical usage is to arrive a half hour before serving time and be empty within 2 hours or so, only requiring a single bag of ice, so I don't have time to let it settle. I've been popping the pressure release often and only serving at 4psi but would like to know if there's a better solution out there...

Mischief, I think the pressure difference is your problem. Your beer is carbonated at a higher pressure right? Then you are lowering the pressure and agitating it (by running it thru the serving lines) causing the CO2 to come out of solution before it exits the tap.

I transport (as cold as possible) and once everything is in place I purge (since the pressure is now likely higher in the keg after transpo) and immediately hook up to my normal serving pressure (10 - 12 psi) With 10ft lines I have no issues.

Sized for 2.5 or 3 gallon kegs. Build photos to follow.

Build photos 1...

Build photos 2...

Build photos 3...