richardtmorgan
Active Member
A new keezer for the basement which will have a nitro tap for serving stout and a hand pump for serving British Bitter. [To augment the 4 regular taps which live upstairs]
Having enjoyed making a keezer and having draft beer flowing in our living room I've decided I want to branch out and be able to serve beer at more English temperatures and carbonation levels (read 'warm and flat').
I picked up a free freezer from Craig's list:
which will hold 3 kegs on the floor and two on the hump if I have an 8" collar.
I bought a beer engine (i.e. hand pump) from ebay.co.uk and had it shipped to the US. It's a shiny Angram 'Energy' pump with a water cooling jacket and also a beer line check valve.
I paid $130 for the pump and $40 for the shipping. It would cost $585 new from ukbrewing.com (Angram's distributors in the USA) and more than twice that from micromatic.com. It's starting price in the UK from Angram is £185 (about $285) - which gives you an idea of how relatively expensive this method of serving beer is in the US. I watched a few pumps on ebay.co.uk and typically the more traditional looking beer engines finished at around $90 (without the water cooling etc...) and $40 was a typical amount to ship to the US. The UK ebay site does seem a smart way to go if you want to get into serving cask conditioned ales on a hand pump.
The plan is for this keezer to be set at 'cellar temperature' 50-55F (my main keezer is at 41/42 F) and to have just the one stout tap and the one beer engine for cask conditioned beer. The rest of the space in the freezer will allow beer waiting to go upstairs to begin carbonating and get a little colder (or for carbonating and chilling a stout that's waiting for the stout tap).
It doesn't have to be pretty (it'll just live in the very unfinished basement where the beer ferments) - so I'm planning on just gluing an 8" collar on, and building a small table next to it to attach the beer engine to. I have four casters in the garage - so I'm thinking of setting the whole lot on a piece of plywood with casters on so that I can move it around. The gas will live outside the freezer.