Kegerator Build

Over the past 6 months or so I have been working on putting together a kegerator to dispense my home brews. It ended up becoming a process, with many trips to the hardware store, but I finally have fresh beer on tap in my apartment. It's pretty boss. I'm glad I finally got the thing up and running. There is nothing better then being able to pour yourself a beer straight from the tap.

As a homebrewer there are several important benefits to kegging versus bottling. Number one, cleaning, sanitizing, filling, and capping the fifty plus bottles needed for one five gallon batch of beer is a bitch. It is much easier to clean, sanitize, and fill, just one five gallon keg. Number two, carbonating takes less then half the time when kegging. Once a beer ferments fully, it kinda blows that you have to wait another two weeks while it bottle conditions before you can drink it. With kegging you get the same, often better, results in less then a week. Number three, with bottling you have a layer of yeast and sometimes sediment at the bottom of each bottle. This means, if you don't want a yeasty beer, you need to cut your pour at exactly the right moment leaving about a quarter inch of beer left in the bottle. That kinda stinks. When kegging, you can leave all that yeast and sediment behind in the fermentor. Also, it is sweet that when I know I need to call it a night soon, I can grab just a half of a beer. Also it is just cool in general to have draft beer in your apartment.

Although it took some time to complete, it really was not difficult. You could probably do the whole thing in one day if you had all the right parts and tools on hand. The fridge I used was a Sanyo 4912 mini fridge. This model is discontinued but there are still a bunch out there. Grab one while you can. I had to remove the shelves and cut out the molded shelves that are part of the door in order to make enough room for the kegs, CO2 tank, regulators, and all the tubing. Next I located the refrigeration line that runs across the top of the fridge using a method I read about online. It involved spreading a mixture of corn starch and rubbing alcohol on top of the fridge, turning it on, and then waiting to see where the mixture dried first. It drys right over the hot line, so I knew not to drill there as I didn't want to turn the fridge into a giant paper weight. Once the line was located, I drilled a hole in the top for the connection tubes using a hole saw. Then I mounted my tap tower on top. That's pretty much it.

Probably the most difficult part was an optional step that I decided to take. I constructed a fan box with a flexible tube running out of the side. The purpose of the box is to blow cold air up into the tap tower. This will keep the beer in the line cold and cut down on foam coming out of the tap. I ran the ac adapter out of the drain hole in the fridge. I used one of the plastic shelves that came with the fridge as a shelf for the CO2 canister and fan box. Everything fits inside, but it is tight and I need to arrange things just right in order to shut the door properly.

Enjoy the pictures below. Right now I have an extract IPA and an all grain pale ale on tap. Cheers.

hole for the lines with water proof insulation tape

CO2 tank with regulator and fan box on the shelf

sanitizing the lines

filling the first keg

beerforce one in all it's glory

A white whale, the red herring, bigfoot?

A week of not drinking, no big thing. Really, more then anything, I missed the ritual. Coming home after a long day at work, nothing puts me at ease like a tasty craft beer. I drank a lot of tea that week to sub in. The week seemed to drag on too. It felt like two weeks. Sobriety, however, is not what I'd like to talk about in this blog post. No, let's talk about urban legends. A while back, someone had told me that only US beers had twist off caps and that all imports had pry off caps. This did not sit right with me. I kept checking my imports for twist offs, but I couldn't find one. Finally, after many years of searching, I found my jackalope. I got a beers of the world box for Christmas. In it was a Peruvian beer called Franca, and lo and behold, a twist off cap. Myth busted. The beer, by the way, had expired back in April. I took one sip and immediately poured it out. It tasted pilsner like, only kinda old and dull, and sweet, but not the good malty sweet. More like old corn syrup. I was kinda bummed because I had never had a beer from South America, let alone Peru. Hopefully one day I will get a good South American beer. I've read good things about Argentinean beer.

My Year of Beer

For me 2010 had it's ups and it's downs, both personally and professionally. One thing that remained consistent was my love for beer, especially the drinking of it. With the exception of New Years day 2010, I drank beer every single night. I was way too hung over on 1/1/10 to drink. Tonight I had two homebrewed IPA's and a Bitburger so far, which makes this one full year of drinking beer. Over the year I have had some really great beers and beer experiences. From being on the bottleing line at Cricket Hill Brewery to touring the legendary Anchor brewery, from getting my hands on a Westvleteren 12 to getting to drink the Russian River sours on tap, it was a good year of beer for yours truly.

So what next. For starters, I am going to stop drinking for an entire week, to prove to myself that I am not an alcoholic, but merely a beer geek. I also want to try different things in the new year, liking checking out whiskey and scotch. I got a set of shot glasses for Christmas that I need to put to use. I'd also like to try out some more cooking with beer. I'd really love to take another beercation, but I don't know if it will be in the budget this year.

Foolishly, back in July, I made the prediction that the Yankees would sign free agent left fielder Carl Crawford during the off season. I was so sure it was going to happen that I agreed I would quit drinking for an additional week if it didn't go down. Well, it didn't happen. The Red Sox signed Crawford to a monster deal. I'm gonna hold off on that second week for now. I'll get around to it, but I got an American pale ale carbing up as we speak.