New 8 Tap fridge with custom copper and stainless tower

I have been working on building a new bar for the basement that will incorporate the 3 vessel e-herms into the bar area instead of a separate room. While I work on this I wanted to be able to use my nice back bar fridge that will be eventually built into the bar. I threw a top together out of double layer MDF and some face trim.

The main attraction though is the tap tower which I am building by hand. I will be using this tower in the final bar and scraping the temporary bar top.

The tower is made out of 4" copper pipe that I cut to size and drilled holes for the shanks This pipe took some serious polishing to give it a shine. It was coated in Renaissance Wax then to prevent oxidation. I am using parts from Still Dragon to make everything connect with Tri Clamp. The ends are soldered on copper Tri Clamp slip adapters. This is a design element I am very excited about because it will tie into my brewery right next to it in the final build of the bar. My whole brewery is all Tri Clamp connections.
The taps are going to be a stout faucet on Nitro for the 1st and 8th tap with 6 CO2 taps in the middle. The 6 main taps are Perlick 650ss. The fridge is a Glasstender.

I will update pics as I make progress.

 

Looking forward to seeing how this one turns out!

 

Looks great. Are you going to have a glycol cooling system?

 

No, being direct draw I shouldn't need one. I am using a small blower and a hose down the tower to the end.

 

Looks Great!

 

That is beautiful! Im always so jealous when people have those awesome fridges. When I see them on Craigslist they are like $2000! Heck, I cant even find a black chest freezer anymore, much less something that looks that good.

 

Absolutely gorgeous! Nice work!!

 

Looks good

 

Very Steampunk.......Looks awesome!!!!

 

I wish I could have bought this for 2k!

Even building it myself as opposed to buying done, to get all the stainless elbow shanks and perlick faucets and ss Stout faucets was a small fortune. The lines are Ultra barrier silver because I knew it would be a nightmare to hook the shanks up in the pipe and get them tight so I didn't want to have to do it again to replace line so seemed like it would be worth the money. The custom tri clamp stuff from still dragon is awesome but also not cheap.

If I was smart I would have just bought a tower from American coffee urn. Wouldn't look as cool but would have been cheaper.

 

This is beautiful. How will the copper fare over time? Will you have to polish your tower often? (sorry about that . . . )

 

I would clear coat that copper to avoid the constant polishing.

 

I coated it with Renaissance Wax. Will see how it holds up. If it doesn't work well then I will apply everbrites protect a clear.

 

Splooosh!

 

I have a question... if the fan blows the cold air into the tower, the air will get heated up. Seems to me that the tower has a lot of area and its copper, which is good conductor.

Won't a lot of BTUs will be lost/gained this way, as well as the tower is very prone to drip in high humidity environments ?

I look forward to a report about how this plays out when you use it. FWIW, I was thinking of doing something similar but held off due to the concerns mentioned above.

 

What is the name of the piece making the connection between the faucet and the copper pipe ? It's not a normal shank