Covid Fridays Bar Build

[jddevinn]

For many years I have had my draft tower mounted directly on top of a temp controlled chest freezer that would fit (10) kegs and a 2 gallon bucket to hold water and a pump for the tower cooling loop. Several months ago work dropped everyone down 10% pay and a 10% hour reduction, so for the past couple months I've had Fridays off. Some of these Fridays I've hung out with friends, brewed (more than I have in years), worked on other projects, been lazy, and a couple I've actually started building a bar. As of this post I'm not yet done, but am close enough enough that everything is functional..... so that means I'm probably slowing down quite a bit.

This is how everything was for years. Date on these pictures was April of 2015. Everything worked well, opening required a stool or wood support due to the weight of the tower. Tower cooling also didn't work great during the summer so I have changed from using one pump and looping between the two spout manifolds to two pumps and one per manifold.

New bar design, removing the top of the chest freezer and insulating a 'pocket' for it to slide into under the tap tower. Two wine freezers wired in and two electrical plugs. I changed some of the detailing of the design when actually building.

 

[jddevinn]

Building out the sliding platform. Using (6) Mcmaster casters

Framing

 

[jddevinn]

Starting the bar surfaces. CO2, manifolds, freezer controller and tower circulation controller are all to be hidden. I ended up moving the manifold into the freezer, it was too difficult to manage (10) CO2 hoses into the freezer. And replaced the 5#er with a 20#er.

 

[jddevinn]

Needed some shop upgrades to keep going. Dust collector with DIY Thien separator and DIY router table.

 

[jddevinn]

Tubes out off the bottom of the draft tower were straight and too long, hitting the freezer when it slid out. I bent them 90°, leaving just enough room to clear the sheets of insulation on the bar.

Installed. I ended up buying an AWESOME quality flush mount drip tray from ACU Percision Sheet Metal. Well worth the money. I've just capped the drain for now. ..... However I didn't plan on this, so had to route out a hole

 

[jddevinn]

So far everything is construction lumber and cabinet Maple ply. The edges of the plywood look awful so I took some 3/4" thick Oak, cut it into 1" strips and then routed the back out in an 'L" shape that hangs over the top of the plywood hiding the sides and the top cut. Also test fit the bar rails, due to shipping costs of long lengths the front is split into two pieces.

This is in the Sunroom of my house (and I promise the rest of the house doesn't look at pack-ratty as the garage and bar). I've tinted the bank of windows by the brewing equipment. Sun was getting in my eyes while working so I put a sheet over the bank behind the bar. When I finish the bar I'm going to delete that bank of windows and replace with some combination of mirror/tv/liquor storage.

(we also lost 3'oclock from the GFs beer clock here)

 

[jddevinn]

More trim fitting.

Epoxy from Bar Top Epoxy - Table Top Epoxy, Countetop Epoxy, Clear Epoxy Resin, Bartop Epoxy, Tabletop Epoxy in the drink rail. The one section of the hand rail looks lighter than the rest... but on only from one angle.

Epoxy on main surface.

 

[jddevinn]

Two electrical sockets installed on the bottom. In the far side of the picture over the CO2 is split in half so that the bottom will meet the epoxy and the top is removable to access the CO2 easier.

Cosmetics are left... we'll see how long it takes me to get to that, especially since this was the last Friday before going back to 'non-Covid' hours.

 

[bobeer]

looks awesome. what a great use of time.

 

[jddevinn]

Over this weekend

• I expoxied the lower section of the bar.
• Made a wood vent hood with the blower I purchased several years ago. I've been just opening multiple windows and using a box fan on an inlet, discharge and right above the boil kettle.
• Rough drew a table around the fermentation chamber and glycol chiller and started cutting material.

 

[lawngnomehitman]

So, Is the butt plug on tap 2 because it's #2? If so, I enjoy your sense of humor.

 

[jddevinn]

Haha, no it's not on tap #2. It was originally the handle for the Pun-ishment Pale Ale

 

[jbschuyler]

Nice work, sir.

 

[Genuine]

looks great man! Keep up the great work!

 

[ehall]

I feel sorry for the guy sitting at the bar... he has no hands!

 

[jddevinn]

I feel sorry for the guy sitting at the bar... he has no hands!

I didn't draw him in a drink either

 

[jddevinn]

Changed the beer and CO2 lines to EVA tubing, much better to manage and will hopefully help with long term (6+ month RIS, 3 month NEIPA DIPA, eta). Started the conditioning chamber frame and top (I've hated putting things on top of the freezer then having to move while brewing for years). Now I need to add drawers, access to the glycol and do general maintenance on the glycol system.

I have liquid cooling in my tap tower but have always had a "bit" of foam on the first pour (especially aggravating on 1/2 pints or small pours of high gravity beer) due to the top of the freezer being warmer then the rest, even with fans, and the CO2 separating in the lines. The shorter runs of the small 4mm EVA tubing have 95%+ eliminated this issue.

Before

After (still two old Accuflex Ultra 235 lines, ran out again). Freezer will fit 9 kegs when "extremely" tightly packed. Extremely as in sometimes needs a prybar to remove.

Nice large workspace. The top is just a bunch of coats of polyurethane for now. If it doesn't keep up with the abuse I'll look at further coating. Backslash with the same edge treating as the bar.

Also started getting some insulation on the garage door.

 

[Kahler]

I. Am. So. Jealous.

 

[theothermillion]

So much awesome work!

 

[Transamguy77]

Nice job! I am so thankful that I’m not the only one who tries to build something in the middle of chaos! Can’t wait to see it all finished.

 

[jddevinn]

I lost focus on working on the bar for quite a while and worked on tons of other general house and a bunch of shop upgrades. This weekend I painted the room, replaced the florescent lights in the "brew" section with LED cans, replaced the boob light in the "bar" with pendent lights and fixed a hole in the ceiling from a leak that happened years ago.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

Delete.