Yet another coffin keezer build!!

[BrewinSoldier]

Hey guys and gals! So I've been wanted to upgrade my 3 corny keezer for a long time. I've got to the point in homebrewing where 3 corny kegs just aren't enough. I'm in a Homebrew club and we do quite a few events where we will blow through a keg each. It's hard only having room for 3 kegs to keep up with events and still have beer for my house. So, I finally am making the move to have a chest freezer capable of holding 10 corny kegs. I went with the Whirlpool WZC3115DW which is a 15 cu ft chest freezer. It's deep enough that it doesn't need a collar if you want to just mount a draft tower on top. However, I didn't want just another basic keezer this time around. I decided to go full boar and build a coffin keezer. I should've taken more photos along the way but I didn't think about making a thread at the time. A lot of this has been trial and error, and I've made a few mistakes and changes along the way. Anyways, onto the pics.

So here is the old keezer in all it's glory. It did really well for the time I had it, but it went to a new home.

The second picture is after I had already built the frame using 2x6's for the bottom of the cart and 2x4's for the side framing. I ended up having to go with 4" casters that were rated at 250lbs each after calculating out 10 full kegs at approximately 50lbs each, plus the weight of the wood, tower(which I'll get to next), all the misc parts and co2 bottle. They were taller than I wanted but due to the weight, I didn't have a choice. I used 3/4 plywood for the sides. You can see on picture 2 that the venting fan is on the side so I cut out a hole for that.

 

[BrewinSoldier]

So here are some more pictures. You can see in the first picture I had to cut a hole in the front as well. I needed access to the drain because of how I built the cart. I can't take the freezer off because of the intake fan protruding out. I built the cart around the keezer and wanted the fan as close to the outside as possible.

So I took the drain plug out and found some tubing that fit snugly in the outer hole. I used some clear silicone to keep it sealed in the hole. Then I ran the tubing out and down through the little cut out to the bottom of the cart. I put in a mini ball valve so I can open or close the flow when I want and it tucks out of the way. On the side with the fan, I ended up using a 12x12 section of fine stainless mesh to keep bugs out. Probably wast needed but I felt better about having it, and it helps blend out the white from the freezer.

Then for the siding, I found some prestained rough cut lumber at Lowe's. They were $10 for an 8' long piece. The only thing I didn't like about them is that they are pretty warped which made them a little hard to mount. Some of the grooves weren't cut deep enough as well. It made it harder to match those up. All in all I got it to work. I still have to stain up some wood pieces to cover the two front corners. I found some 1 3/8" wood corner guards that I'm going to use. I really wanted 1.5" but couldn't find that size locally.

 

[Elkobrewer]

Looks nice.

 

[BrewinSoldier]

So now onto the lid. I wanted a custom made tower which I thought I could do for semi cheap, however as we know with homebrewing that's just never the case lol

I knew I wanted a black iron pipe tower. All of the ones I've seen people build on here were made out of 2" pipe. When I got down to the local dealer, 2" just seemed way too small looking. I was going to go 3" because I liked the way it looked, but it thought it would be too heavy, so I settled for 2.5". Well once I got it all assembled, it is like 60 pounds. That's just the piping with no taps, shanks or anything inside for the lines.

So that said, I need to figure out a way to mount it to the lid with all that weight and have the lid actually support it. I decided to build a lid that would actually lay flat to help keep the overall height of this whole thing so you don't have to be 6'5 to reach the taps. I used 1/2 plywood on the top along with 2x4's for the front and sides, that overlapped on top of the bottom section. I also wanted support underneath the lid because that flimsy piece of plastic wasn't going to work. I had to cut out another piece of 1/2" plywood. I tore off the plastic liner underneath and used silicone to remount the rubber insulation for the lid. What I should've done is cut around the outside of the plastic liner so the rubber insulation would've stayed mounted like it originally was. Too late but for whoever reads this, that's how I would do it next time.

 

[BrewinSoldier]

So for the controller, I just used the controller from my old keezer. It's a STC-1000 from Brews by Smith. It was supposed to be used as a fermentation chamber but I decided to turn it into a keezer. It works well and keeps the temperature pretty close to where I set it. I drilled out a 1.5" hold to run the cords and temp probe through, and along the inside where they are hidden. I'll probably plug the hole with something later on, I just couldnt find a rubber grommet locally. I also attached a pic so you could see the screen I was talking about to help protect the fan.

Now onto the tower. This is currently in the process of being built and I'm still throwing ideas around in my head. The biggest problem with these black iron pipe towers is how to insulate them. I've seen a bunch or different variations of these and there was things I liked and didn't like about them. We all know that if the tower isn't cold and kept at the same temperature as the kegs, we will be pouring cups if foam. Another issue is the condensation build up and dripping in my wooden lid. I've read about people using copper pipe and running it down into the kegerator, hoping that it would chill the copper and with copper being a great conductor, it would essentially chill the copper running through the tower. Well to me, this wasn't going to cut it for two reasons. First being that I didn't want to have two big pieces of copper tubing running way down into my keezer taking up space and restricting keg placement, and second I just don't feel like the would chill good enough. I do like the theory behind it though so decided to use part of it.

Most commercial kegerators like True, BevAir, etc run fans to cool the towers, or even glycol chilled lines. My glycol chiller is already reserved for my stainless conicals so that wasn't an option. I ended up buying this fan from Amazon. It has really good reviews. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KC070SI/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

So then I started thinking about how I'd run everything. Like I said earlier though, I'm still building it so we will see how it works out. So I went to the hardware store and took the fan blower tubing with me. I also knew id have 5 taps, so 3 lines running up one side of the tower and 2 running through the other side. I cut two small pieces of beer line and took that with me as well. I also took the 2.5" street elbow. Once I got to the hardware store I shot over to the copper tubing. I took the two pieces of beer line and the fan tubing and tried fitting them into different sizes of copper tubing. I settled on 1 1/4" copper tubing. It fit the two beer lines and blower tubing in perfectly. That way I can have the fan blowing cold air in one side of the copper tubing using all the air from the fan actually going into nothing but the copper pipe and out the other side.

Then I went over to look at the foam pipe insulation. Well of course they had one for 1 1/4" copper pipe, but it had a wall thickness of 1/2" which was just too snug to fit into the 2.5" iron pipe. I saw they had another one that had 3/8 wall thickness which I think will work perfectly, but of course they didn't have it for 1 1/4" pipe. So online I went and found that frost king makes it. I found it on Amazon but of course they are temporarily out of stock. The only problem I'm having is that I cant find the elbows and tees in 3/8" wall, only in 1/2" so I might have to rig something up.

 

[BrewinSoldier]

So for the tower itself, I got all of the straight fittings as close to lined up as possible and Mig welded them on the back side so they wouldn't spin, plus not be visible. I'm waiting for some copper tee's to come in so I can start figuring out how in going to get everything inside.

As far as width goes, with 5 taps it's VERY close to the edges of the inside of the kegerator. I was only able to get 3 out of the 4 bolts mounted into the flanges. It seems to hold it pretty good but damn this lid is heavy. I've been playing around with different gas struts to help assist the lid and take pressure off of the keezer hinges. I went with 100lb struts but they are too much. I'm thinking maybe 50lb struts or even adjustable struts. Plus I'm having a heck of a time trying to figure out the right angles to mount them.

 

[BrewinSoldier]

Last but not least is the drip tray. I'm still up in the air on what I'm going to do for this, but I think I'm going to have to have a custom one made. If I remember correctly, when I measured it's going to have to be 50 or 51" long by about 8" width. The drains I'm going to run on each side, down through the wooden lid and out the back of the keezer. These will both have mini ball valves as well to make them easy to empty into a bucket when I need to. The very last things I'll do are mount the regulators and 8 valve manifold, and finish the wood on the top of the lid. Once I get further along, I'll update this thread and post more pictures. That's all for now folks.

 

[day_trippr]

Gotta love an optimist

Cheers!

 

[BrewinSoldier]

Gotta love an optimist

Cheers!

Haha yeah it's a tight fit so we will see how that works out. Even if I get 9 I'll be happy with that. Once I throw a Sanke keg in there, that will decrease by probably another keg.

 

[DownstairsBrewing]

I like the fact that you have a bottle opener mounted on the side already...you know, in case someone doesn't like anything from the TEN kegs.

 

[BrewinSoldier]

I like the fact that you have a bottle opener mounted on the side already...you know, in case someone doesn't like anything from the TEN kegs.

Haha yup..well and if anything, for the mean time until I get this thing up and running..I never knew how bad it would suck to not have my beer on tap anymore. The convenience factor is huge.