Setting Up A New Bar

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venno

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Hi All

I am getting back into brewing after a 7 year abscense. I used to brew and keg when I was in the middle east, out of necessity, and am getting back into it over here in Perth. I have got a cheap corner bar and fisher paykel bar fridge (120l, all that would fit under the bar) purchased off Gumtree and have ordered a ss beer tower with perlicks 525ss taps plus a reg with dual manifold from Amazon (had to do the shipito route though as the vendor doesn't deliver outside US). I will get the rest of the gear locally here in Perth as the markups on the remaining stuff isn't too bad locally.

I am I right in assuming that its best to get the gas bottle from a nearby local source that offers exchange or refilling, how are shops/vendors about refilling bottles they didn't sell?

I guess I will also need the sundry items like keg couplers, beer line...etc... what do you all reccomend?

I was just goind to get the postmix kegs with ball locks as that is what we used in the mid east and I'm familiar with them, or should i consider something else?

My fridge will require some mods to get 2 kegs in, I will have to remove and flatten the little mini freezer plate, then drill a gas line hole and a beer line hole. Has anyone done this on a fisher bar fridge before, can anyone reccomend locations or methods for doing this?

Sorry for the newb questions but in the mid east I relied on just copying exactly what the people already there had done, right down to buying the same fridge and drilling holes in the same places...etc....no real investigation/risk required unlike now.

Regards

venno
 
Hi venno,

You can either get the swap n go gas bottles from a few homebrew shops - or the cheaper route is a fire extinguisher with the dip tube removed. A good supply is Paul Cowling from Pressure Teting Service in Belmont. Call him and he'll be able to let you know if he has any in stock, let him know it's for keg set up. He also does refills while you wait which is handy.

Craftbrewer sells 4-pack of kegs with shipping for a great price. An extra keg or two comes in handy when your brew is ready to keg, but the beer hasn't quite run out in the serving keg yet. The free shipping is a good deal especially when you can get them to put the disconnects and tubing inside the kegs. For ease of connections - the threaded disconnect with john guest female adaptor. Barbed disconnects are cheaper. Beer and gas lines - flexmaster 2 which fits nicely in the john guest fittings.

There are plenty of threads about drilling into the side of fridges - yours might be chilled by the freezer plate and not have any lines in the wall. There are ways of testing where they are. You could also drill through the door if you want to avoid the sides - no cooling lines in there.

Cheers
-cdbrown
 
Hi venno,

You can either get the swap n go gas bottles from a few homebrew shops - or the cheaper route is a fire extinguisher with the dip tube removed. A good supply is Paul Cowling from Pressure Teting Service in Belmont. Call him and he'll be able to let you know if he has any in stock, let him know it's for keg set up. He also does refills while you wait which is handy.

Craftbrewer sells 4-pack of kegs with shipping for a great price. An extra keg or two comes in handy when your brew is ready to keg, but the beer hasn't quite run out in the serving keg yet. The free shipping is a good deal especially when you can get them to put the disconnects and tubing inside the kegs. For ease of connections - the threaded disconnect with john guest female adaptor. Barbed disconnects are cheaper. Beer and gas lines - flexmaster 2 which fits nicely in the john guest fittings.

There are plenty of threads about drilling into the side of fridges - yours might be chilled by the freezer plate and not have any lines in the wall. There are ways of testing where they are. You could also drill through the door if you want to avoid the sides - no cooling lines in there.

Cheers
-cdbrown

Hi cdbrown

Thanks for the info, I will definitely check Paul out.

4 kegs would be nice, I will probably filter (thats what we had to do OS as we were doing rebrews) so the extra kegs would come in handy. Kegs are about 80 bucks over here which isn't too bad, I don't mind paying a little extra if I can grab the item straight away and return it if theres any issues. The taps/fonts were a different story entirely, costs a motza anywhere in Oz for decent gear, much cheaper in the US even with freight.

I think you might be right regards the fridge, I have had it running for a day now and the only cold producing part is the exposed U shaped mini freezer. I suspect, as you stated, that this radiates the cold for the whole fridge and the freezer door just traps in more of the cold in the U shape space to freeze the smaller compartment. That would indeed be good news as my only alternative is to drill thru the RHS for the gas/beer lines.

Cheers for the info
 
A couple of pics to help with visualizing my setup (pretty limited space really).

CIMG1417.JPG

CIMG1418.JPG

CIMG1420.JPG

CIMG1419.JPG
 
Hi venno,

You can either get the swap n go gas bottles from a few homebrew shops - or the cheaper route is a fire extinguisher with the dip tube removed. A good supply is Paul Cowling from Pressure Teting Service in Belmont. Call him and he'll be able to let you know if he has any in stock, let him know it's for keg set up. He also does refills while you wait which is handy.


Cheers
-cdbrown

I called Paul and he has a steel bottle or an aluminium one (160 and 180 bux respectively). Which would you reccomend, the ally one is 1kg bigger.
 
I'd probably go the bigger one. 1kg of gas is quite a lot and having a lighter container can't hurt.
 
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