# 4-tap Font + Keezer Design



## Olut (26/6/12)

This is a first post, hi all!

I am currently designing a 4 tap keezer for a freezer that I bought off eBay. 

To start off with, I modeled the freezer dimensions. My freezer had sliding glass doors which are removed in the design.









In terms of kegging, the freezer will hold 5 kegs plus CO2 (I am yet to find a satisfactory solution for the CO2 mounting though). I would recommend getting a couple of extra kegs so you can swap to a full keg instead of waiting with a batch to fill one. When looking at a freezer for kegging the likely highest point will be the top of the CO2 regulator at approximately 720mm. Your keezer needs to have at least this depth plus a little bit of headroom, so make sure to ask the seller on eBay.

You'll need air fittings and liquid fittings and in my opinion, the john guest fittings seem easier then the barbed fittings.

So, you will need:

x = number of taps

x taps
x kegs
x keg seal kit 
1 Freezer
1 CO2 Tank
1 CO2 Regulator
1 Fridgemate + box + extension lead
1 food grade lube
2 stainless steel 5mm clamp
1 x way gas manifold
x Quick Disconnect (Gas in)
2x Quick Disconnect (Beer)
x Carbonator cap (or something to suit the back of your taps!)
3x MFL - John guest adaptor
1 Beer filter/gravity connector
A few metres of beer line

Knowing all this:

This allowed me to design a new top, which I made from 50mm cool room paneling with an aluminium edge. The groove in the panel allows the front half of the counter to be removed, in order to remove kegs / CO2.





From here, you could order any of the fonts from eBay and just holesaw through the panel with minimal design, however, I wanted something a bit more unique so I decided to roll my own.









This design would have the beer lines going in on one side, and a fan attached on the other side to draw air through and keep the beer lines cool. When building a keezer, I am not an authority, but I believe if you can get some sort of arch/goalpost/pipeline design that allows you to draw air through it as opposed to a T-shape, the benefits of glycol are negated and the obvious cost and complexity drawbacks are avoided.

In case someone wants to get one of these fabricated, the elbows were 3 inch 316 S/S from Midway Metals  I believe the width/height of these elbows came to about 200mm each.

The flanges and tube were obtained from Laser Central. In addition to those shown I also have 2 off 200mm long 3 in S/S tube sections to set the height of the taps. For me, I felt that about 1350mm total height from ground was comfortable. The tap tube has 4 holes laser cut to accommodate carbonator caps with the beer line to john guest fittings which seemed to coincidentally fit the back of my taps. I tested the seal on these and it seemed to be okay.

I've just ordered the steel today and it's looking like being about six hundred dollars, which seems very reasonable for an all stainless steel font, although I am sure welding will cost money if you can't DIY.

If you don't like the flanges or welding, you can use triclover fittings in which you need 2 ferrules, a seal and a clamp per join, although a solution would be needed to attach the font to the counter.

Hopefully my experience designing one of these might help some of you!

Finally, a big thank you to Ross and the craftbrewer team for helping me with this.


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## cam89brewer (26/6/12)

Wow an impressive amount of planning has gone in for this and I am sure that it will help any one else looking to do the same thing, if only I had put this much thought in!! All I did was drill 3 holes in my fridge and fitted the taps. :lol: 

Welcome to AHB by the way.


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## donburke (26/6/12)

concept looks great and be sure to post pics of the project as it progresses


i suggest that you double check that you are happy with the distance of the font from the front of the keezer so that you dont have to 'reach' too far to pour a beer, if not move it forward a little

interesting to see how effective the fan will be at cooling the font, it would be better than no air, but may place a heavy load on the freezer

good luck and welcome to the forum


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## punkin (27/6/12)

If you were happy to do it in triclamp, we could do mirror polish for a _lot_ less than $600 at Stilldragon dotcom.


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## Olut (27/6/12)

donburke said:


> concept looks great and be sure to post pics of the project as it progresses
> 
> 
> i suggest that you double check that you are happy with the distance of the font from the front of the keezer so that you dont have to 'reach' too far to pour a beer, if not move it forward a little
> ...



The taps themselves will stick forward a fair way by nature of their construction 

I hope it's not too much of a load for the freezer - I don't want to kill it!


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## Olut (10/9/12)

Just by way of an update:
I've done some more work towards building this design.





I haven't drilled the holes yet, but here the font is in place.


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## micblair (10/9/12)

Hey where did u get your font from in the end, eBay? If so, does the stellar have more?


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## kelbygreen (10/9/12)

now thats bling lol


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## Olut (10/9/12)

micblair said:


> Hey where did u get your font from in the end, eBay? If so, does the stellar have more?



100% Built from 316 Stainless steel, got the flanges laser cut and holes in the pipe laser cut also. One thing I would recommend is bigger diameter pipe... it's hard to do up fittings from inside an 80mm diameter!


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## DarkFaerytale (11/9/12)

beautiful, great work


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## Frag_Dog (11/9/12)

How much did it cost to get this thing built (minus the taps)? How much of the fabrication did you do yourself?

I have a chesty with a nice iron bark bar top the father-in-law made up for me, but no font to throw on it. I've been thinking about building something like this but my fabrications skills are not worth mentioning.


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## micblair (11/9/12)

I got a quote from Andale for something similar (3 font version), they wanted $1400. That's some serious coin.


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## Olut (12/9/12)

Frag_Dog said:


> How much did it cost to get this thing built (minus the taps)? How much of the fabrication did you do yourself?



Luckily I have a friend who is a welder  

The welding and polishing was a lot of work, I would recommend the use of Triclover fittings where possible to make it easier.

All up the costs were about $800 for all the materials and laser cutting. It could be decreased by the use of triclover fittings and also by using 304 grade stainless. When you count up the cost of DIY versus a bought one, the bought one will probably be cheaper, but they didn't make one with 4 taps that suited my dimensions.

eBay in Europe would be a good place to find a font, but beware of the different thread sizes and choose taps to match.


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## 431neb (17/7/13)

Holy cow! This font is exactly what I thought I could make.

It's a little more difficult that I thought. 

Updates on this build would be awesome.

So-far I've been looking at a lot of stuff an never quite getting the perfect parts. Too big, too small, not polished, wrong flanges, pipe or tube?, tap connections, access to fit taps, cost(!!), availability. IT'S JUST A PIPE GODDAMMIT!!

Some links if anyone cares.

http://imgur.com/r/AskEngineers/rNRgF

http://www.lancerbeverage.com/our-products/beverage-systems/beer/bar-fit-out/specialty-founts/pipeline-fount/pipeline-fount

http://www.aapindustries.com.au/AAP-Catalogue-Sections/AAP-S4-Flanges-E2-S.pdf

http://www.bracton.com/equipment/draught-beer-equipment/beer-towers-fonts


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