Kegging Setups

[Philthy79]

Well after a few years of moving form place to place and living in small apartments, I finally have a shed to put a bar in.

thanks to a lot of you for inspiration - I did a lot of browsing to see what a lot did. Just need to clean up the walls and rest of the area; put some pics up etc; and it'll be sorted.

:icon_cheers:

 

[Spork]

Rustic. Nice. I like.

Put an order (well, a couple of orders) in to Ross @ CB today. A 4 keg / 3 tap "kit". All I need now is 76 litres of beer, CO2 and (another) freezer. Already have a fermenting / CC freezer, but don't want to loose 1/2 my temp. controlled brewing environment.

Ross was very helpful, advising me on what gear I needed and what I didn't, and checking my order to make sure everything will work "out of the box". Looking forwards to having some pics to post in this thread soon.

 

[punkin]

I'll post some build pics, should hopefully have this fitted out and sorted this w'end.

Out with the old ...



And in with the new..

300l stainless lined freezer. 140mm high collar gives plenty of room for 6 kegs (even without the collar) and the freezer hump bit has a divider to use as a fridge section for my yeasts and enzymes, sausage skins and all the other stuff that was in the man fridge.

Plenty of room on top of the kegs for her soft drinks too.





I got a small white cupboard from the pine joint for $70, added a taller base to it and mounted my font.

The font came from a local fridgey place for $80, the Perlick 525's came from the states for considerably more.

I made some decals for the tap backs out of some whiteboard sticker, i'll be customising some handles down the track.








I still have a lot of work to do in installing lines and manifolds etc, but have most of the bits organised. The fridgemate, gas bottle etc sits inside the cupboard.

 

[Logman]

That's pretty darn clever - nice work! :beer:

 

[Amber Fluid]

Yes good work Punkin. A good idea with the extra cupboard that's for sure.
How are you keeping your lines cool from outside the freezer to the font/tap?

 

[MarkBastard]

Yeah I like that idea Punkin. It allows you to hide the chest freezer if you want also.

 

[punkin]

Yes good work Punkin. A good idea with the extra cupboard that's for sure.
How are you keeping your lines cool from outside the freezer to the font/tap?

I'll just use a bit of foam lagging at this stage, only talking about a foot or so of line. You may notice a bit of the same lagging behind the freezer in the photos, my outdoor tower is under the blue rag near the orchid. it goes through the wall and into the current keg fridge. there's probably about 800mm of line there with lagging, only the first quarter of a beer of the night is warm. You never notice it.

Did some manifolds up this afternoon, more piccies tommorow.

 

[punkin]

Doing some plumbing after moving it into the lounge room today.

I know it's lazy, but to save me learning all the maths and theory to use just once when i measure my beer lines...

I have the standard flexmaster 10mm od beer line, it goes into a foot of 1/3" od line from the font. i know i should be using thinner line, but i'm not, so can someone who's up on the maths for the flow control give me a rough guess how much line i should cut for each tap asssuming average pouring pressure?

i just want a simple guestimate and will show some beer pic porn for a reward for it... :icon_chickcheers:

 

[punkin]

It's not fair. :angry:

After reading and seeing all the wonderful setups i tried my freezer on the fridgemate with a 60l fermenter in it for 3 weeks while i waited for all my parts to come in and it worked fine. Now i've spent tween over $600 on fittings and bits and installed in my house, it's been running for 2 days and won't get under 10C...


It's not fair........

 

[cdbrown]

Is the freezer constantly running and just not getting colder?

Beer line length can be tricky. I aim for about 2.5vol CO2, keezer set to 4C and the bottle reg is at 85-90kPA. My lines are 5mm internal and have them around 3m long but still need to make some adjustments to one or two (the tubing in the fonts are different sizes which causes other problems). Go longer and then trim as needed.

 

[stux]

It's not fair. :angry:

After reading and seeing all the wonderful setups i tried my freezer on the fridgemate with a 60l fermenter in it for 3 weeks while i waited for all my parts to come in and it worked fine. Now i've spent tween over $600 on fittings and bits and installed in my house, it's been running for 2 days and won't get under 10C...


It's not fair........

A freezer should easily get under 10C :-\

1) Have you got enough thermal mass in there? a bunch of kegs?
2) Have you got a fan to stir up the air a bit and make it more uniform?

Is it a second hand jobby? if so... perhaps its rooted

First thing I do when I get a 'new' fridge is crank it to max and see how low it will go, if I'm lucky they get to 0 or 1C. But sometimes I've found they only get to 6C or so when empty, but will go down to 1C when full.

 

[stux]

A freezer should easily get under 10C :-\

1) Have you got enough thermal mass in there? a bunch of kegs?
2) Have you got a fan to stir up the air a bit and make it more uniform?

Is it a second hand jobby? if so... perhaps its rooted

First thing I do when I get a 'new' fridge is crank it to max and see how low it will go, if I'm lucky they get to 0 or 1C. But sometimes I've found they only get to 6C or so when empty, but will go down to 1C when full.

Is it auto-defrost? perhaps its stuck on a defrost cycle

 

[punkin]

It hasn't got the fan in there yet, but i had it running for 2 weeks with the controller and a 60l fermenter full of water. It was taking three or four hours to get from 6C down to 2C. It's been off for a week till sat.

This has now taken 24hrs to get from 10C to 7C running flat out.

I'll give it a few more days before i pull the trigger on a new ebay one, but i'm not holding out much hope

 

[beerdrinkingbob]

It hasn't got the fan in there yet, but i had it running for 2 weeks with the controller and a 60l fermenter full of water. It was taking three or four hours to get from 6C down to 2C. It's been off for a week till sat.

This has now taken 24hrs to get from 10C to 7C running flat out.

I'll give it a few more days before i pull the trigger on a new ebay one, but i'm not holding out much hope

Sounds like would make a good anchor... I killed mine but pretty sure i clipped the gas line :angry:

 

[punkin]

Sounds like would make a good anchor... I killed mine but pretty sure i clipped the gas line :angry:

Yep, after talkng to hsb about his one i will be ordering the 300l version next week.
I like the idea of having the fridgemate built in. Seems to sort of legitimize it in a funny sort of way


If i'd have known the true cost this would work out to be, i never would have started this project.



NoTurningBackNowPunkin

 

[technoicon]

Re wheel base - the plan for case swaps, etc is to bring the sack truck, as I need to also bring 2 milk crates of longnecks, etc. But its a good idea! (edit)

Drainage - yeah contemplate a bung, but a small amount of ice will keep it cool, and as the keg gets drained it becomes lighter so balances extra ice being added. Also if the bung dole not seal then I have a leaking porta-keg possibly on someones floor if inside.

Looking forward to seeing this at the swap day mate!!! looks great!!

I think a bung will be annoying. my thoughts would be to just finish the keg off :icon_drunk: , pull it out. the make hatchy empty the container.

from the shots doesnt look like you would fit heaps of ice/water in there.

 

[Nevalicious]

Looking forward to seeing this at the swap day mate!!! looks great!!

I think a bung will be annoying. my thoughts would be to just finish the keg off :icon_drunk: , pull it out. the make hatchy empty the container.

from the shots doesnt look like you would fit heaps of ice/water in there.

I was just able to squeeze a 10kg bag of ice in my porta-keg setup, with the keg and soda stream gas bottle too. She's a heavy little bugger when I was trying to carry it up the stairs at the holiday home went rented a few weeks back...

The bung, as Raven pointed out is a good idea, but is just another thing to worry about leaking (potentially onto someone's floor)

Nev

 

[JoeF]

Hi Gents

Long time visitor, first time poster!

Thought i'd drop a quick few lines to say 'thanks' for all the great info I've acquired on AHB to help me put together my first Keg fridge.

You guys rock :super:

It's nothing too flash, but seeing as I was given the fridge from a mate going OS it didn't really set me back too much.

Anyway here 'tis

Cheers!

:beer:




The guts of it



Custom drip tray!



My 1st pour (before I started cold conditioning )

 

[JestersDarts]

Here's some pics of my new bar set up

Solid piece of timber for the top, recessed drip tray - slight warp in the timber, but i've pulled it down onto the frame so its not too bad.
at 1.25 metres high... It's a standing bar..

the font has glycol lines that I thought could run into the freezer compartment of the white bar fridge, pump glycol with an aquarium pump through the font - this all happens, hooks up quite well, and the font fogs up for about 15 minutes, but the little freezer hasnt enough guts to hold the coolant at freezing temps when pumping through a warm font.. but it was worth a shot anyway.

 

[JestersDarts]