Last Winter (2008)

Last December John and I drove up to PA to pick up a large commerical kegerator from my moms neighbor who was willing to trade it for a case of homebrew. While the kegerator was a bit rusted and had a few dings and dents, it was in good shape and a amazingly good deal (easily lists for $2200+ online). The kegerator we picked up is a True TDD-2 with vinyl sides, stainless steel top, and two towers. The specsstate it can hold 2 half barrels, but with its huge interior it should be able to accommodate at least 10 x 5 gallon cornies. The kegerator came with a working regulator, co2 tank and keg coupler. We just needed to replace the lines, add fittings, faucets, and one tower. For now it has a nice home at Johns house because I don’t really have room right now. Here are a few shots of the kegerator at pickup, before and after cleanup:

This Winter (2009)

My mom’s neighbor has been in contact with me since July to try arrange the pickup of another kegerator. It took a while but I was finally able to pick it up over the xmas break. Again the deal was the kegerator for a case of beer, any way you look at it a pretty good deal. The one we picked up this time is a Beverage Air BM23, which is commerical grade but only holds one barrel. Just like the True kegerator, it has a nice shelf for the gas in the back and thus has room for 4 cornies. This kegerator was in a bit better shape than the True, but still needed cleaning. It was missing the tower cap, faucet, regulator and gas tank, but came with a Guinness/Harp coupler. Once we cleaned it up, added new lines, and replaced all the missing parts it worked like a charm. I would have exchanged my kegerator with this one because of the stainless and extra space, but since I’m already setup with my 3 tap tower, I let my neighbor Steve use it. Here are a few pictures of the kegerator:

So I finally decided to get real tap handles for the kegerator. People are always asking me whats one where, so this will definately help with that, plus they look nice. They each have plexiglass slides front and back with a guard that goes down the middle to hold in a custom insert. They are all 12" tap handle, made from wood but highly polished, and purchased from NorthernBrewer. There wasn't enough room for the middle one so I had to cut it down a bit, but no big deal. Pics ar below:

My plan all along for the wedding party was to have some really good beer on draft. I’m still working on getting a  good sixtel for the party since I have been away so much. Worst case I will get a sixtel of 60 min from Corridor. Either way my plan is to have a commercial sixtel and a homebrew corny available.

The only remaining challenge was to figure out how to dispense it because the caterer does not have anything to do this with. I already have a two tap tower because I recently switched to a three tap so my best option was to use that in some fashion. I basically considered two options, 1) Stand with the tower that can clip on to a table; 2) Portable kegerator made from a sealed plastic trash can. I chose the second route because it seemed like an easy way to contain the kegs, keep them cold with ice, and cover with linen so that it looks ok.

So what I ended up doing was:

1. Get a 35 gallon cylindrical plastic trashcan from Lowes
2. Cut out a round piece of plywood and epoxy’ed it to the top of the trash can lid
3. After replacing the existing beer lines, I screwed the tower to the plywood and through the lid
4. With the lid done, I used some excess plywood to build a base
5. Started the base by nailing two pieces together for stability
6. Next I nailed on cleats to hold the trashcan and C02 tank in place
7. Then screwed on four 3 inch casters to the bottom of the base some that it was movable
8. For the gas I screwed a 1 to 2 distributor next to the gas cleats and cut a slot in the top-back of the can for the gas lines.
9. This setup works well enough to handle 1 sixtel and 1 corny, or 2 cornies.
10. The tower was a little wobbly so I bolted the plywood to the can lid to ensure it stays if the glue does not hold.

All in all the thing looks like it will work well. I tested it with full connections and the standard D coupler for the commercial keg sits a bit too high  so I had to order a low profile one, but other than that it’s fine. Still need to figure out how much ice is needed, but that should be an easy problem to solve.

Any one want to volunteer to take this home with them at the end of the night? Pictures are below:

I finally gave in and purchased a 3 tap tower for my kegerator and it looks real nice. My other option was a $60 add on to my old tower that gets screwed on. I felt like that would look ugly. The full 3 tap tower was only $150 or so and came with three faucets (not that I'm using them), so I went with the big one.

The tower itself is 2-3 inches taller and the faucets are aligned in a V shape. For my third faucet I looked around for another ventamatic/shirron but they are all sold out and are not being made anymore because of some litigation against the manufacturer. Midwest supplies had a couple gold ones but I didn't think they would go well with the silver ones. In the end I just picked up  a perlick, which is similar and still has the forward sealing option that I like.

Now all I have to do is keg the fresh hop ale and I will have 3 beers on tap. Check it out!

So when the Dooge left he took with him the regulator I was using for my second CO2 tank for beer filtering. So a week or so after losing the regulator I figured it was time to get a new regulator. I have been meaning to get a double regulator to simplify my gas distribution anyways, so this was the perfect excuse. In hindsight I probably could have used a triple regulator because I like to have a third port to connect to for bottle filling from the keg. Instead I just pulled the gas splitter from the old regulator so that I have two ports from one of the regulators. Not ideal, but at least the gas distribution unit is gone which saves some space.

Disconnecting all of the old tubing and adapters took a while, but it's not too hard if you're careful not to damage the regulator parts. Unfortunately when I pulled the regulator out of the box, one of the pressure gauges was all bent up and didn't work properly. So I had to pull the one from the old regulator to get things working. I wrote to Midwest Supplies and hopefully they will do an exchange for the broken pressure gauge.

Before	After