Kegging Setups

[Vlad the Pale Aler]

is that acutally inside the house mate? i didnt think the missus would allow it!
my one is trying to get mine outside of the house and into the shed by dangling
carrots infront of me "we can put an aircon in the shed to make it cool for you that way
u can put your keg frige in there as well" pfft it can stay in the dining room next to the
dinner table that way i dont have to get up.

on a side note there is a beer in that fandangled chest freezer of yours dated november and its now january
Rob.

Yes its inside the hoose, still don't know how I managed to pull that one off.
The November keg is an English pale ale, I am only a moderate drinker you know!

 

[eric8]

Heres MK2.
View attachment 16996

Vlad that is a sweet looking setup. One of the best looking chestie's I have seen. How did you do the wood around the sides? Thats similar to what I want to do with mine. I have a double cobra font to add to mine, but have to wait to tell swmbo. " I bought it with my xmas bonus' " :lol:
eric

 

[Daniel.lear]

All

I've re-routed the gas line from the outside, using a cable gland. drilled a 16mm hole in the plastic with a spade bit and a 25mm hole in the back with a holesaw. The hole in the back is a bit messy atm but will fix that when i go back to work and "aquire" some teflon edge strip.

End result is much neater, and when more fun tickets become availible, i'll mount a gas manifold on the inside as well.

Also, i know many of you use pc fans in chest freezers, but do many of you use a fan on the inside of your upright fridges?? and do you think it has any benefit??

Cheers

Leary

 

[SJW]

Ok love the pictures but am surprised so many people are using chest freezers and not fridges, how to you keep the temp from getting too cold. Do you put a thermostat on which turns power on and off or some other simple trick ?

Until I get another Fridgemate I take the Fridgemate out of the chest freeze and use it in the fermentation fridge and just put the freezer on a timer. It comes on for 20mins every hour to hour and a half and keeps eveythng just right.
I have done a lot of testing and found that with the smaller freezer ie a 4 keger the computer fan does no make much diff. Just makes the freezer cycle quicker.

Steve

 

[Doogiechap]

snip
Also, i know many of you use pc fans in chest freezers, but do many of you use a fan on the inside of your upright fridges?? and do you think it has any benefit??

Cheers

Leary

It made a huge difference for me in addressing the temp difference between the top and bottom of my fridge, which in turn reduced the amount of bubbles in my beer lines significantly. Two thumbs up for me. :icon_cheers: .
Cheers
Doug

 

[cliffo]

It made a huge difference for me in addressing the temp difference between the top and bottom of my fridge, which in turn reduced the amount of bubbles in my beer lines significantly. Two thumbs up for me. :icon_cheers: .
Cheers
Doug

+1 for using a PC fan in a fridge, helps maintain a more even temp throughout

 

[domfergo]

Gday all

Here is some pics of my bar (Bootleggers Inn) and keggerator.

For those interested in the labels I have painted on the fridge. i got some labels transferred on to transparents and used a overhead projector to draw the outlines on.

Received my order from Ross this week and finally got some time to install my new celli and lines.

Now the front end is where I want it have to start getting the back end of the brewery up to speed!!!

Cheers

Mass

 

[TidalPete]

Here is a pic of my very modest first steps in kegging. I like kegs as I am told they probably won't explode!

The fridge in the pic is the outside beer fridge and as you can see it won't take two kegs and the C02, and SWAMBO has renegged on her earlier agreement to allow me to drill a hole in the 3 year old fridge. She claims that I confused her, then tricked her into agreeing. She's right though - heavily pregnant - she was easy to con. Now she has caught on! D'oh! :blink:

Just caught up on this thread Incider. You reckon you come from 'Mansborough' -- 'Manshed'? :lol:
Just drill the hole & damn the consequences. She can hardly divorce you for drilling a hole?
Just do it! WITBH is running your place?
With the extinguisher on the outside you will probably get two kegs in. Just do it!

TP :beer:

 

[InCider]

Just caught up on this thread Incider. You reckon you come from 'Mansborough' -- 'Manshed'? :lol:
Just drill the hole & damn the consequences. She can hardly divorce you for drilling a hole?
Just do it! WITBH is running your place?
With the extinguisher on the outside you will probably get two kegs in. Just do it!

TP :beer:

Alright Pete!

I took Winkles advice to put two kegs in and gas when necessary (read all the recent posts) - but when you see the fridge up close, it is really small - so I will just get a new fridge to take 3+ kegs. And there is SFA room over the motor housing to put anything.

Down in my MANSHED I have one more fridge, and will mod that for winter, but at the moment it's used for fermenting.

And as for Just Do It you only just started kegging too didn't you? :lol:

InCider.

 

[TidalPete]

And as for Just Do It you only just started kegging too didn't you?
InCider.

Around 12 months now (I think??). Just do it & damn the consequences. This is not about kegging but controlling your own destiny & be damned to political correctness.


Are we turning into a nation of big girls??? So afraid of the missus??

TP :beer:

 

[InCider]

Are we turning into a nation of big girls??? So afraid of the missus??
TP :beer:

Not really afraid of her mate - but I will be when I take all the shelves off the door and put in a fibre sheet like in Jye's post!

I have to keep her onside as she's been looking for a 40l pot for my AG rig.... he he he he he...

InCider.

Anyway, you're taking me :icon_offtopic: and you're old enough to know better! :lol:

 

[TidalPete]

I have to keep her onside as she's been looking for a 40l pot for my AG rig.... he he he he he...

InCider.

No, No, Sean no compromises allowed. You are the Man in the Manshed. :beerbang:
Tell her that if she won't get you the 40litre (better off with 70 litre) pot then to forget about it.
BE STRONG & you will never regret it.

Bloody hell, why am I worrying about your domestic problems?? I'm alright Jack. :icon_cheers:

TP :beer:

 

[hughman666]

Are we turning into a nation of big girls??? So afraid of the missus??

TP :beer:

damn right! just get it done with and then you can just get drunk and slap her when she complains :icon_drunk:

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

Having just read the last few replies to this thread, I now know why there were no more singlets at the department store sales when I drifted by today... :icon_cheers:

 

[PistolPatch]

Need to whack some pics up of my keg fridge for another thread so I suppose this is the thread.

My keg fridge is a Westinghouse upright freezer converted to fridge using BrissyBrew's temp controller.



All 6 kegs run through a manifold (from Ross) and out the one tap (great tap thanks doogiechap) as follows...



All connections including those to the manifold are quick-release fittings. Lines are kept in place with quick-release clips and the kegs are supported with 5mm thick aluminium shelves (thanks to doogie for that idea too) as per pic below...



The whole set-up is on a waterproof MDF base that can be slid easily.

This set-up has been great for me as it holds a lot of beer in a small footprint. Beer pours very nicely especially now I have a tap with flow-control to deal with that first little trickle of warm beer on the first beer.

Cheers
Pat

 

[NRB]

Interesting setup Pat. How do you select the beer to pour? Do you have some sort of ball valve on each line leading into the tap manifold?

 

[PistolPatch]

Yep mate, each beer line has a little ball-valve on it. You'll have to click on the image to see it properly but if you do, you'll see that tap number 5 is on.

If you change beers, you get a large mouthful of the prior beer through. I usually just drink that bit. If I have people around, I generally use jugs.

One weakness of only one tap is that if you have visitors around and they accidentally open up two of the valves, the beer in the top keg will gravity transfer to the one below. This happened at a brew day I had last year. My schwartzbier ended up getting mixed up with your All Amarillo Ale and a kolsch that I had kept for ages and which were to be myu first attempts in a comp

I've since tried to fix that by adding one-way valves on all the beer lines (more money!) I'm trusting that they will activate under slight pressure but haven't tested this as yet.

Think I'm going to ban brewers from my fridge anyway - all they do is empty it. The reason that No 5 is open is because it is the only keg with any beer left in it!

Cheers mate,
Pat

 

[Pumpy]

Lines are kept in place with quick-release clips and the kegs are supported with 5mm thick aluminium shelves (thanks to doogie for that idea too) as per pic below...

Cheers
Pat

Pat ,

Love the fridge! but one tap hey comon !!!

still works well for you with the NRV I would get too confused flicking them switches after a few beers !

Great idea re the 5mm aluminium shelves

Hell that Doogiechap is a real wizard of ideas .

Pumpy

 

[Screwtop]

Yep mate, each beer line has a little ball-valve on it. You'll have to click on the image to see it properly but if you do, you'll see that tap number 5 is on.

If you change beers, you get about 20mls of the prior beer through. I usually just drink that little bit. If I have people around, I generally use jugs.

One weakness of only one tap is that if you have visitors around and they accidentally open up two of the valves, the beer in the top keg will gravity transfer to the one below. This happened at a brew day I had last year. My schwartzbier ended up getting mixed up with your All Amarillo Ale and a kolsch that I had kept for ages and which were to be myu first attempts in a comp

I've since tried to fix that by adding one-way valves on all the beer lines (more money!) I'm trusting that they will activate under slight pressure but haven't tested this as yet.

Think I'm going to ban brewers from my fridge anyway - all they do is empty it. The reason that No 5 is open is because it is the only keg with any beer left in it!

Cheers mate,
Pat

You might remember Pat I use picnic taps on three kegs in my serving fridge. Fav party trick is to connect a clean tap (to clean I flick the tap lever to fully open and flush through from a keg containing some line cleaner, and hang them to air dry with the tap open, 9 times out of 10 I forget to shut the tap again) to a keg and fill my shirt, pockets and shoes with beer while chanting "F%^k, F%^k, F^&k", those taps are so hard to turn off in a panic :lol: Not sure if the chant has been passed to me subliminaly from some anchient brewing entity but it flows forth so readily I believe it to be a possibility. Am I possesed or simply pissed?

 

[PistolPatch]

Firstly, I lied in my last post here. I have since changed, '20mls' to 'a large mouthful of beer.' Sorry about that. I think I wrote 20mls because the amount is negligible.

Mr Michael Screwtop: It's hard to remember anything from your place apart from the excellent hospitality! Yep I do remember the picnic taps. With beers pressurised at 80kpa I never had any luck with them no matter how long I made the line or how little I depressed the tap. Yours worked so what's your secret?

As for the ancient brewing chant, you need to study morphic fields. That exclamation has survival value and so is passed on through 'morphic' fields so as us brewers can evolve quicker.

It also has applications in other areas and I was most grateful for that chant at least 1400 times today whilst fixing someone else's 'chant-up.'

Spot ya mate,
Pat