My Kegerator Build

I've been brewing now for a few years. For the majority of that time I bottled everything I brewed, and it was a huge pain in the ass -

My process generally included de-labeling the bottles, cleaning the bottles with PBW or OxyClean, sanitizing them with StarSan, rinsing the bottles and drying them on a bottle tree, then adding corn sugar to the finished beer and stirring it, then filling each bottle and capping each bottle. 5 gallons of beer will fill over 2 cases of 12 oz. bottles, so this was a huge time suck, and drove me to look into kegging my beer.

I bought a starter keg setup that came with a ball lock keg, fittings, & a picnic tap. I found a 20 pound CO2 keg on Craigslist and a mini fridge. My first kegerator was born - 

 

At this point, I hoped that the fridge would hold a constant temperature without a temp. controller. This ended up not being the case and I actually froze my beer. Of course I didn't realize this at first and wondered why my honey amber ale was suddenly a 9% beer. I opened the keg after a while and found a solid block of beer ice inside. Needless to say I dumped that beer.

After doing a lot of research and reading, I decided I wanted to make a true keezer (keg freezer) build that utilizes a chest freezer with a temperature controller. Depending on the size of the chest freezer, you can hold quite a few Cornelius kegs and the CO2 tank. I'll provide a full bill of materials at the bottom of this post.

My fiance found a great deal on a chest freezer and bought it for me a Christmas present. I immediately got to work measuring the inside of the freezer and determined that I needed to use 2 x 10's to build a wood collar tall enough to house the kegs with plenty of room to spare including the chest freezer's shelf. I measured the dimensions of the freezer, cut the wood & laid it on top prior to assembling to check that everything fit correctly - 

I used wood screws and angle brackets from Home Depot and assembled the collar. Then I took the beer shank's front pieces and laid them out on the front of the collar to figure out how high I would want my taps. I measured the overall distance and ensured each tap was equally spaced apart -

I drilled the holes using a 1 inch spade bit which made quick work of the wood. I sanded the inside of the holes and the collar itself to leave it nice and smooth -

Next I made sure that the beer facuets fit in the holes, everything was looking great so far - 

Next it was time to stain the wood collar prior to attaching it to the chest freezer. My fiance wanted to stain it and she did a kick ass job -

It took a few days to fully dry but ended up looking fantastic -

Now it was time to attach the wood collar to the chest freezer. I used clear silicone and applied a steady bead of it along the entire edge of the chest freezer. Then I sat the freezer lid on top of the collar and added weights on top to ensure that the seal would be good once the silicone dried -

Now it was time to attach the liquid lines - 

And the gas distributor / gas lines - 

 

Once that was done, all that was left was to re-attach the lid to the wooden collar and paint the front of the kegerator with chalkboard paint. Our cat had to check it out as well - 

The almost final product ended up looking pretty great. The drip tray was made from a 10 dollar thin sheet metal piece I found at Home Depot in the section where they stock heating / cooling vent stuff. I used rivets and a few metal hooks to attach it to the wood collar and it has done a great job catching any drips from the faucets -

 

Clearly I'm still missing a faucet which I plan to probably get a dual regulator to be able to have one beer at a separate PSI than the other beers attached to the system. This could also end up being for a stout faucet in the future.

All in all, this was a pretty easy project. There are a lot of great resources and other examples on www.reddit.com/r/homebrewing or homebrewtalk that you can check out if you need to see how others have done it.

One thing you must do after hooking everything up is checking for leaks. I drained my 20 lbs CO2 tank in about a months time due to a leak in my system. Use soapy water or StarSan on all your connections when you hook it up for the first time and look for air leaks that create bubbles. This will save you money and a headache down the road and literally takes 10 minutes tops to do.

Overall Bill of Materials:

- Home Depot 7.0 cubic ft. chest freezer

- CO2 tank with CO2 regulator

- 4-way gas distributor

- Beer facuets with beer shanks, beer shank liquid nozzle attachment with neoprene beer washers

- Ball lock connections for gas & liquid for each keg in the kegerator & tubing to connect each keg to the gas distributor & liquid beer faucets

- Analog temperature controller

- Home-made drip tray made from bending and riveting sheet metal

- Mailbox numbers for labeling each tap

A lot of this stuff can be found on homebrewing websites like Midwest Supplies or Northern Brewer. Northern Brewer has an amazing video showing you step by step how to assemble everything here: http://www.northernbrewer.com/how-to-build-a-keezer-or-freezer-kegerator/

All in all, this does require some time and money, but if you have the time you can usually find some things used on craigslist or online, or slowly acquire parts over time. Nothing is cooler than having your own homebrew on draft and filling kegs is a hundred times easier than bottling all of your beer.

Thanks for reading,

Ryan