New brewer. first Keezer, coffin top or tower tap?

[rbuljo]

Hi guys, new brewer here..

I have started to obtain all parts needed for a Keezer..

So this will be my first keezer ever, hoped to get some pointers to help me getting started. been viewing some of your builds, and I must say some of these builds are truly impressive..

picking up a freezer today, it is 400L/105Gal.
seeing many ppl make a keezer and have a wooden "collar" with their taps there. but i wondered if I might make a tower tap/coffin top instead. either weld one myself and buy the taps separate or just buy preassembled tower. thinking 3 taps.

so for you guys who have been down this road before, what would you recommend?
really just starting to dip my toes into this, so please bear with me.
Loving this forum, the ingenuity of you guys are amazing..

 

[kpr121]

The ‘through the collar’ approach is usually cheaper (and easier) option compared to putting something on top. You would have to do something with a drip tray attached to the side of the freezer.

Coffin top looks great IMO. More work, more money, and you have to plan on how the thing will be opened and make sure you have the space for that to happen.

IMO coffin top if money, time, space are not an issue and this is going somewhere where you want it to be a focal piece in the room. Taps through the collar if you just need something to supply your beer in a glass simply.

 

[Zepth]

I was going through the same debate myself. Decided on the collar approach and very happy with it. Also since the lid was re-hinged to the collar I can have it back to a wall and still open it right up for keg swapping. A top tower would mean I'd have to move it away from the wall. Since I didn't tear up the freezer to make this happen I could still un-convert it back to a freezer should I want a larger keezer, or need to use the warranty.

 

[kh54s10]

I am not sure of the capacity of the freezer. If it will hold more than 3 kegs, but you want to start with only 3, a collar would be easy to add more faucets to later.

If you use a premade tower with 3 faucets you would have to add another one to increase the capacity.

I too like the idea of having the ability to open the top when the freezer is close to a wall.

 

[djonesax]

I started kegging with my first batch and have never bottled a beer. I made wine for years and the thought of cleaning and sanitized twice the number of bottles as needed for wine made me cringe.

I personally would avoid putting taps on the top of the freezer, as it just seems very inconvenient when you need to work on something or open the top for any reason. Just my opinion.

I started with a simple used chest freezer and a Johnson temperature control. That was about $200 total with the control. Initially I just put the keg and C02 in the freezer with a picnic tap. This worked fine it just wasn't very elegant.

Later I added a wall mounted tower that I made myself with 4 taps and drip tray. The problem with this set up was foamy beer. The 5+ feet of line outside of the freezer would warm up causing c02 to come out of suspension. As a result, unless I was pouring consecutive beers, I always had to pour off about a third of a beer if I wanted one without foam.

Recently, I added a collar to the freezer and mounted the taps through the collar. The benefit of this for me was that now my lines, and shanks are always cold and I get much less foam when I pour. If the outside of the tap is warn I still may get a little but its much more tolerable. The downside to this was that at 5'10" it made the freezer taller and harder to get things in and out. So lifting the 60L fermenter in and out to coldcrash is tough and a 15 gallon Sanke kegs, is next to impossible without help.

I vote for the collar, keeps everything simple, cold, and contained.

David

 

[Zepth]

The downside to this was that at 5'10" it made the freezer taller and harder to get things in and out. So lifting the 60L fermenter in and out to coldcrash is tough and a 15 gallon Sanke kegs, is next to impossible without help.

That's a feat of strength for sure. Just a quick derail, you might be able to make a modified collar so that one edge of it is actually on hinges and folds down out of the way for when it's time to swap things in or out. Then fold it back up and latch it back into place.

 

[djonesax]

That's a feat of strength for sure. Just a quick derail, you might be able to make a modified collar so that one edge of it is actually on hinges and folds down out of the way for when it's time to swap things in or out. Then fold it back up and latch it back into place.

I have a drop ceiling above the keezer so my plan one day to mount a concealable hoist for the heavy stuff. I lifted a 10 gallon primary into it last night which was tough but manageable.