Kegerator

[alwilson]

Hi Guys,

Has anyone used a Kegerator with their home brewed Ales? Whats your opinion? I'm assuming these aren't gravity drawn?

Like the ones at this link: http://www.kegerators.com/kegerators.php
(non-commercial, just for reference)

Cheers,
Alex

[chris_reboot]

yep.

you can see some pics of it here

or a video on youtube

basically, I have 4 cornies, in a chest freezer, gas line in from the side, a temp controller in a box I made, and a tap on top.

a lot cheaper than the ones you've linked to, but works the same way (perhaps a little more heath robinson though )

[Fallen]

a lot cheaper than the ones you've linked to

That looks the business, how much did it cost to make?

[chris_reboot]

some of these bits I would have bought anyway as I was moving over from pressure barrels to cornies, so not all this was technically in the kegerator project budget ahem.

4 x cornies £150
disconnects, beer line and assoc connectors £20
temp controller and box £25
freezer £25
gas bottle £24
cobra tap £30

approx costs.
so actual kegerator itself (minus cornie bits) approx £80 (freezer, temp controller and tap)

oh, and the wood surround to raise the level up, £5

[Fallen]

Superb

Now then, how am I going to get this past her indoors

[alwilson]

I quite fancy using a mini Kegerator with 5L mini kegs - I mean an off-the-shelf kegerator.

Has anyone done this, or have any advice? Would it work? Would I need to prime the kegs differently in anyway?

thanks
Alex

[chris_reboot]

a lot cheaper than the ones you've linked to

That looks the business, how much did it cost to make?

Bit more detail for those who want to know more about mine.

For the kegs part:
cornies - as many as SWMBO will allow you to buy
disconnects - if you're getting kegs from norm, they'll normally come with them, but you can simply buy kegs without. I have 2 sets of disconnects so I can use 2 of my kegs at once, I then swap them over to other kegs when one keg gets empty or I fancy a change.
beer line - again, norm will supply some. 3/8ths is about a cm in diameter. you will need to step this down otherwise you get too much foam, so a JG fitting to connect 3/8th to 5/16th I think it is (harmony hut on ebay will sort you out for connectors and line). get some 5/16ths as well then.

tap- your call. you can fit a tap like mine, or go for a kegerator tap that bolts through a hole in the side of a fridge, or even connect up to a hand pull. norm can supply taps too, and I bought a tap that fits straight onto the disconnect. its ok, but you really need some line so you can control flow and foam, so by all means get one, but I only use mine for cleaning and running sterliser through now.

Gas
You'll need a co2 bottle that you can easily get refills for. I went to my local cash and carry/beer suppliers. a 14lb bottle was 24 including deposit. it should last over a year or more for me.
Onto that you must attaach a regulator. norm supplied mine for 40 notes. you can also get gas management boards so you can have kegs at different pressures. I will upgrade to one of those later.
My reg has a single take-off onto which I have a line, then a Y-connector, so I actually have 2 kegs running off one line at the same pressure.

for the fridge:
buy/blag/get from freecycle a fridge or chest freezer. I measured mine up before buying it from someone who was down-sizing their house. it was virtually new, but best bit was it took 4 cornies nicely

I had to add some wood to increase height as the kegs would not fit in. the freezer lid simply unscrews no bother on mine, there's no cables or anything, so I un-screwed it, and reattached onto wood. wood was 6"x1", but maybe I would use 6x2 next time for more stability. Just went to local wood shop, told him what I wanted, and brought it home and screwed panels together.

Into the side of that, I drilled 2 holes. One for the co2 pipe coming from the gas regulator, and one for the temp probe.

I also drilled a hole through the lid to attach the cobra tap as I needed to have a top mounted tap system so little hands coudln't reach.

Line then runs from keg, up cobra body, into tap back which get screwed on to cobra.

Temp Controller
The main motivation for building this was consistency of serving temp of beer. I was fed up storing barrels in the shed and either having it too warm in summer, or bloody freezing in winter. Obviously as I have used a freezer, I didn't want frozen beer, so I bought a temp controller from ebay. see this thread for a how-to.
Basically a £20 temp controller from hong kong, a "project box" from maplin, and a regular power socket on the front.
I drilled out holes big enough to mount aforementioned bits, so I have controller at the side, and in the lid the socket.
A temp probe attaches from controller, through side of kegerator, and dangles in mid-air near the base of the freezer.

I have set the temp setting to 12C, and leave it at that. the freezer plugs into the controller box so it only kicks in when needed, and avoids frozen beer

Most of this can be seen in the video I made, albeit in not such detail as hopefully I've described.
I'm by no means a DIY expert, but was mostly a bit of drilling and screwing odd bits together.
I also used some jubilee clips to attach the gas pipes on with for extra measure.

HTH.
Chris

[Andy__]

Chris,

thats a fantastic system you have created. I would love to create something like this. Could you please explain how the box works. I mean how does it monitor the temperature in the freezer

Cheers

Andy

[chris_reboot]

thanks dude

the temp controller mounted in its little box has a temp sensor lead attached that hangs in the centre of my freezer in mid-air.
This gives back readings to the box, which invokes the 'cold' circuit, which kicks the fridge into life.

when it reaches its target temp, the circuit kicks out again.
I have it set to +/- 1C as I dont want it on/off all the time, and there's also a pre-configured 3min delay on that too which is supposed to help the compressor in the fridge last longer.

[chris_reboot]

you can maybe see a better pic of that lead here