Building a kegerator in my basement bar, from scratch

[MoRoToRiUm]

Hanr3, if you are considering a dryer duct or something to help add insulation, why not add a blower or suction fan? It would be easy to add I would imagine, and if it were sucking cold air from the bottom of the fridge it would help your lines stay a lot cooler (I still need to get around to doing this in my Sanyo 4912).

 

[lspr_mtu]

I am in the final stages of a mini-fridge kegerator, basement remodel, wet bar project. I am putting my mini-fridge in the utility room and running the beer lines through the wall into a half barrel where the tappers will be mounted. I looked into the insulated box design, scratched it- too complicated and not practical. Looked into insulated flexible beer cooling system lines- again scratched that idea, too much cost and not worth the effort.

I am going to run the beer lines through the top of the fridge, through the wall and into the barrel tappers, about 2'-3' run outside the fridge. $6 for 1/2" pipe insulation from Lowes is all I am going to use. Sure the first half beer for the night might be "warm", however every beer after that will be cold, especially if I keep my fridge temp around 35 degrees. How warm does it get in your basement? Mine stays 68 degrees pretty much year round, even if my beer does warm up to room tempurature, its still a cool 68 degrees. Not like it will be hot beer. Besides it's beer and I'll drink it warm or cold. I might run teh beer lines through a piece of 4" flexible dryer duct or insulated felxible duct to insulate it a little more. One other thing to consider, when it comes to clean the lines, will you have to do it where they are, or will you be able to pull them out and clean them in your sink? I am going to clean mine in teh sink next to the tappers.

I guess my drinking habits are somewhat dictating my design - I generally only have 1-2 beers a day, and I'll often skip several days either because I'm traveling or because I'm watching my girlish figure. So I don't want to have to dump half a beer each time - and I refuse to drink warm, flat beer. Although, the flexible ducting does offer another possible option. Again, the challenge would be to make sure there is adequate circulation of air within the duct. And I'd need at least 3 runs for 6 taps (assuming two lines for each duct allowing for spacing of the taps).

As far as cleaning, I haven't really even cleaned my setup yet - each keg is probably on its 2nd or 3rd batch now (I'm still fairly new at this) and I've heard every third batch is a good rule of thumb for cleaning the lines and taps. All I was planning to do was fill an empty keg with warm/hot cleaning solution (B-Bright or PBW) and let it run through each tap for a few minutes; then do the same with sanitizer (StarSan). Andy maybe use a flexible brush if there was any remaining grime visible in the lines. I don't see the need to get a hand-pump system when I've already got CO2 to do the job.

 

[madewithchicken]

I have had a lot of luck with my set up. I took a cold plate and shoved it in a mini-fridge. I have the cold plate daisy chained and currently I can pull 6 straight beers before the temp goes above 45 degrees.

Tonight I plan to submerge it in a bucket of water inside the fridge. This way it will take a lot more before it gets warm and I can use each coil instead of daisy chaining it. I would recommend this project to anyone. Just buy a big cold plate on ebay.

Mine is a 3 tap cold plate and I am hoping I can fit the bucket and 1 keg in the mini fridge. That will give me 4 taps. But you can get really large 7 tap cold plates.