josh79
Member
Now I'll say that right now I do not brew my own beer. I hope that will change here in the near future. As soon as I finish the many projects that I have started right now. At least thats what I'm told. I do however enjoy beer very much. One of my current projects conveniently helped me convince the wife to convert the garage into a man cave. Moving our bar from inside the house to the garage to keep it away from the little one was an idea of mine. I host poker night at our house once a month or so also and so last year I decided to build a couple poker tables that I was dismantling and reassembling once a month. So now that I have taken over the garage I will keep them up all the time.
I also started to think that it would be cool to have a kegerator in there too. I started doing research and started looking for a mini fridge to convert. I figured converting one myself would be cheaper than buying one of the nice new fancy ones. Well my research sot me going and then led me to converting a chest freezer. I thought this would be great because then I could have mutiple beers on tap. Well I started thinking I would do two towers with double taps on them. I had all the equipment picked out and I just kept holding off on hitting complete order. I was glad that I waited because as I kept looking for ideas I fell upon the Jester Keezer. I started looking at everyone elses variations and decided thats what I was going to do. I started trying to figure out how I would complete the build to incorporate some of the things that I was hoping to do with my original idea. I decided to pull the trigger and ordered the parts. I got lucky and the same day I ordered the parts I was looking on Craigslist for the freezer and came across a 23 cu ft freezer. I had been looking and looking waiting for a larger one to pop up at a reasonable price. I jumped on it at once.
Works good, no rust it's a little older so I am hoping it doesn't crap out on me as soon as I get it finished like I've seen others say. I wasn't sure where to start. I had 30" of clearance inside the freezer so I wasn't going to need a collar. I thought about adding one anyways just in case for future expansion. I was looking at the hinges and realized that they were different than any of the pictures I had seen on here. They are pretty heavy duty bar they comes out of the wall of the freezer runs through the lid and goes back int the wall of the freezer on the other end. So I decided to not even mess with it. I Built a base with wheels and the lower skirting first.
I haven't attached the skirting to the base yet. I'll have space at the bottom, top and a 2 inch gap between the freezer and skirting. Hopefully this will help keep some air flow. If not I'll add the fan.
I started on the top next. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do, because I knew I wanted to have a door on the top that opened so that I could keep cold glasses and some bottled beer inside and be able to access it easily enough. I also didn't want the coffin to look weird and be off center. So I decided that part of the top would have stone and the other side would be wood so that the coffin would be centered in the stone and the access door would be cut out of the wood half.
I decided that I would go with 5 taps even though I am only plumbing 4 currently (You never know when your going to want more and I wanted it to look right from the start). I am hoping that I will actually be able to brew my own and thats when I will expand to that 5th tap. I went with the Perlick 525 SS after looking around a little. I had a hard time deciding whether to just go with a 4 - way manifold or spend the money and do the 4 - way secondary regulator. I bit the bullet and went with the regulator since I'll have a variety of beer on tap and would like them all to come out right. May not be necessary but I did it anyways.
Unfortunately I have been limited to working on it a little at a time with work and being gone on the weekends. Also waiting for the drip tray so I could start making the cuts. Since it was supposed to be on the first order but they forgot to ship it. Hopefully things will start to move faster. I can hardly wait til it is done and I get to pull that first draft. I'll update as I progress.
I also started to think that it would be cool to have a kegerator in there too. I started doing research and started looking for a mini fridge to convert. I figured converting one myself would be cheaper than buying one of the nice new fancy ones. Well my research sot me going and then led me to converting a chest freezer. I thought this would be great because then I could have mutiple beers on tap. Well I started thinking I would do two towers with double taps on them. I had all the equipment picked out and I just kept holding off on hitting complete order. I was glad that I waited because as I kept looking for ideas I fell upon the Jester Keezer. I started looking at everyone elses variations and decided thats what I was going to do. I started trying to figure out how I would complete the build to incorporate some of the things that I was hoping to do with my original idea. I decided to pull the trigger and ordered the parts. I got lucky and the same day I ordered the parts I was looking on Craigslist for the freezer and came across a 23 cu ft freezer. I had been looking and looking waiting for a larger one to pop up at a reasonable price. I jumped on it at once.
Works good, no rust it's a little older so I am hoping it doesn't crap out on me as soon as I get it finished like I've seen others say. I wasn't sure where to start. I had 30" of clearance inside the freezer so I wasn't going to need a collar. I thought about adding one anyways just in case for future expansion. I was looking at the hinges and realized that they were different than any of the pictures I had seen on here. They are pretty heavy duty bar they comes out of the wall of the freezer runs through the lid and goes back int the wall of the freezer on the other end. So I decided to not even mess with it. I Built a base with wheels and the lower skirting first.
I haven't attached the skirting to the base yet. I'll have space at the bottom, top and a 2 inch gap between the freezer and skirting. Hopefully this will help keep some air flow. If not I'll add the fan.
I started on the top next. I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do, because I knew I wanted to have a door on the top that opened so that I could keep cold glasses and some bottled beer inside and be able to access it easily enough. I also didn't want the coffin to look weird and be off center. So I decided that part of the top would have stone and the other side would be wood so that the coffin would be centered in the stone and the access door would be cut out of the wood half.
I decided that I would go with 5 taps even though I am only plumbing 4 currently (You never know when your going to want more and I wanted it to look right from the start). I am hoping that I will actually be able to brew my own and thats when I will expand to that 5th tap. I went with the Perlick 525 SS after looking around a little. I had a hard time deciding whether to just go with a 4 - way manifold or spend the money and do the 4 - way secondary regulator. I bit the bullet and went with the regulator since I'll have a variety of beer on tap and would like them all to come out right. May not be necessary but I did it anyways.
Unfortunately I have been limited to working on it a little at a time with work and being gone on the weekends. Also waiting for the drip tray so I could start making the cuts. Since it was supposed to be on the first order but they forgot to ship it. Hopefully things will start to move faster. I can hardly wait til it is done and I get to pull that first draft. I'll update as I progress.