B-Sain
New Member
Hey all, I am new to the site and I am going to be starting my first home brew in the next few weeks. Up until now I have just made runs across the state line to buy kegs of commercial brew. I have an old over/under fridge & freezer in the garage that I converted to a Kegerator, sanded the ugly mustard yellow paint off and painted the entire thing in chalkboard paint. So far, it is a great conversation piece and has served me well. But over the last year or so, it has left me with bottled beer because as we all know, fridges from the 80's aren't all that portable. I am a huge soccer fan and love ReAL Salt Lake, we go to all the games and with that comes hours of tailgating. Up until now, I have just loaded up the cooler with ice, beer and liquor and headed out the door. I googled around and looked at tons of portable kegerators. There wasnt anything out there that matched what I was looking for, so I went to work on designing one on my own. I wanted one that was completely custom, stout and ran off of old fashioned frozen h2o. I work in a sheet metal shop so most the materials I needed were available from the scrap bin, which helped keep costs down. I laid out the plans on the plasma table, loaded a sheet of 16ga black iron and started cutting. I went with a overall size of 20x20 and a height of 30", this will give me enough space to house the 7.5 gallon keg, c02 and a overflow container plus the ice to keep it cold. I welded it all together and then loaded the beast in the Jeep and headed home, I sanded it down and put on the primer. I wanted it to be 100% RSL since that is the sole purpose of this madness, I went to the local orange hardware store and bought a few rattle cans of paint, yellow for edging and striping, claret & cobalt for the main colors. It took me about 3 days to come up with a paint layout that I was happy with, so once I got that I dove in. Once painted I bought a fathead decal and put it on, with help from the bro-in-law we applied automotive clear coat to protect the paint and keep the decals in place. At this point I thought I was done, then I realized I needed some custom RSL tap handles to finish it off. Went back to work and laid out some simple teardrop handles, cleaned up the edges and painted them to match. I bought some temporary tattoos at the stadium to put on the handles, wasnt sure if they would work but, surprisingly they worked very well. Once they were on I sprayed them with a heavy coat of Shellac to protect the tats. Once I was done with the cosmetics I wanted to start on the insides, we do fiberglass ducting in our shop so I was able to build an insulation insert made of 2" fiberglass board, once that was in place I built another thin sheet metal insert to put inside the insulation, I drilled a hole in the base of the Rslerator for a drain and also attached some casters to help make this a bit more mobile. We took it out on its maiden voyage for 2 games last year and it worked like a champ, except one issue. It was heavy as hell, I'd say 165# fully loaded. So asking the wife to help hoist this bad boy into the Trailblazer was a bit unfair. So over the offseason I came up with another idea, a hitch mount pivot arm. I built it out of square tubing and angle iron, I had to make it as theft proof as I could so it took some scheming. I made it into a clamshell type housing, the base is welded onto the square tubing which is welded on the drop-arm that attaches to the hitch. The Rslerator sits inside the angle on the lower half and then the top half goes over it, with a square tube down the back side that slided into a square tube attached to the bottom base, they are locked together with a pad lock. I also had to buy a tap lock to keep people from drinking my beer while were are in the game. As you can see in the pictures the unit locks into place directly behind the car, but at the tailgate I can unpin it and swing it out and away. This leaves us with full access to the cargo area in the Trailblazer. Not shown in the picture is a trailer jack that will help support the weight of the Rslerator while it is fully extended. Let me know what you think, I dont think my friends fully appreciate the value of this mobile beer dispensary. Sorry for the long post, I hope I didnt lose half of you because of the read. Thanks again and I hope to get lots of advice and encouragement for my upcoming home brew and kegging adventure.
