If one wants a long lasting appliance to be dedicated to serving beer my suggestion would be to find the oldest working refrigerator or freezer one can find. Refrigeration appliances from the 40s, 50s and 60s were built like tanks and have none of the extra, added attractions of more modern units. Old fridges are binary; they’re either off or on. There are no fans, no heat/defrost cycles to make them frost free, nothing to fail but the compressor itself and those seem to be nearly bulletproof.
My ferm fridge is a 1949 Hotpoint. I’ve owned it for almost 25 years and it keeps chugging along. My kegerator is a 1963 GE that my parents bought, used, for $25 sometime in the late 70s. They kept it in their basement as a backup fridge. When we cleaned out their house after they moved into senior housing I brought it to the farm and used it as a backup for a few years before converting it to a kegerator 8 or 9 years ago. That one does have a fan to push air through the condenser. Blowing out the condenser and defrosting the freezer once a year is all the maintenance that unit seems to need.
Old fridges and freezers are usually very cheap, often free. If the “newer is better” crowd is worried about reliability they can pick up a couple at a time if space to store the backup is available.
