Kegerator Part 2: Planning

Once we knew we were going to get a chest freezer, the hardest part was deciding on how we wanted the kegerator to look. We both knew we didn’t want to have the taps coming out the side of the chest freezer as the look wasn’t right for us, so that left getting some sort of tower on top. Towers aren’t cheap, but we found a very good deal on a stainless steel “T” tower with 4 taps. We toyed around with the idea of trying to build something, but rationality won, and we nixed that idea. We decided to go with 4 taps after doing some fitting with our current kegs. We wanted to store the 20-lb CO2 inside the kegerator to hide it, so that left enough room for comfortably fit 5 kegs. With 5 kegs inside, we decided to not do 5 taps, that way with 4 on tap, the extra spot could be a carbonating keg to be “on deck” as soon as it was needed.

As for the top and sides of the unit, we must have spent a week scouring the internet for pictures of other people’s kegerators to get some inspiration. We eventually found a really nice picture of one with a tiled top and wood around all the sides (on further research, it turns out he had a vanity that he tiled on top and ran the beverage lines in from the basement below). You can see the picture below, but we used this as a general model for our project.

We had some rough sketches of the unit with measurements of various aspects of the freezer. We could then start sizing tiles, borders, paneling, etc.

Next we went to Lowes to pick out tile and try to game plan on what we were going to do with the sides and front. We thought we were pretty lucky when we found some wainscoting that fit perfectly for the front of the unit without any cutting. Our plan was to just glue it on the front and then paint it a nice dark espresso color. For the sides we planned to attach some plain boards and then frame the front corners to complete the look.

Unfortunately, upon further research, we learned that it’s not the best idea to glue wood to the front/sides of a chest freezer. When the compressor turns on, it actually dissipates heat through the front and side walls of the unit. If we were to glue directly to the walls,  it would be harder for the heat to escape and you can stress the compressor out and potentially shorten its life. To avoid that, we’ll have to separate the walls of the chest freezer with our wood paneling by at least 1-inch.

We’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to do that and still make it look good, so for now, we just focused on the top of the freezer. It had been about a week since we drank any draft beer (which is too long in the Dietrich house, especially during football season), so we decided to finish the top and then deal with the sides later. With the tile picked out, we were ready to go.

Porter

With cooler weather approaching, it's time to start brewing for the Fall. I really enjoyed last year's English porter, so I decided to brew it again this year. Porter is one of my favorite beers as it is a dark, malty brew that is great to sip on and savor slowly. It's a little chewier than stout and usually a little less roasty and pairs great with BBQ and all manner of chocolate deserts.

This time around we used the same exact recipe as well as water additions adding sodium chloride, (NaCl, salt), CaCl (calcium chloride), Sodium Bicarbonate (NaHCO3, baking soda), and Chalk (CaCO3). The carbonates (CO3's) are needed to raise the mash pH as the black patent (a highly kilned malt) will lower the mash pH due to it's acidity. Chlorides are also needed to push the Sulfate:Chloride (SO4:CL) ratio in favor of the chlorides to accentuate the malty flavors of this beer.

Last year I used WY1318, London Ale III and had really good results. Unfortunately, the brew store was out of that strain and I subbed WY1968. Looking back I wish I would have chosen something different, but 1968 is considered a good all-around strain, so hopefully it will perform well. It has received some bad reviews from people who say it does not attenuate very well, so I'll have to keep an eye on the fermentation and raise the temperature towards the end to make sure the yeast doesn't flocculate out too early.

Not the greatest picture above (it's early and dark outside), but you can see the mash is very dark and already has a nice mocha-colored head on it. This is not going to be a strong beer, more of a sessionable beer at ~5% alcohol.

We'll give it a couple of weeks to ferment out, by that time we should have some more space in the kegerator (the Pale and Schwarz are almost gone) so we'll be able to start carbonating it and serve as soon as there is room.

Last thought: it's hard to believe we've only brewed 6 times this year! The last few years we've been averaging over 90 gallons/year and we're only at a third of that so far and it's almost October. Most of that is due to the residency for the first half of 2013. Working 70 hours/week with only 4 days off a month really cut into our brewing time. Thankfully, we've brewed just enough recently to have a full kegerator. Now that work is normal at 40 hours/week, hopefully we'll be able to squeeze in another 4-5 brews in the remaining 3 months of the year.

Kegerator Upgrade Part 1: Buying a Chest Freezer

For several months (pretty much all summer) we’ve been talking about wanting to move the kegerator inside. The outside kegerator didn’t have the greatest seal on the doors and would have a lot of condensation on the outside when it was humid (which is all the time here in NC). Also, the taps and drip tray would get moldy if not cleaned on a regular basis. Overall, having a kegerator outside just wasn’t ideal in this hot and humid climate.  I have been nonchalantly browsing Craig’s List for a while looking for a good deal on a kegerator, but after discussing it with Elise, we both decided that a new, clean, and energy efficient freezer would be the way to go; especially if it was going to live inside.

We decided that we would list our old kegerator on Craig’s List, and if it sold, would use that money towards a new unit. I posted on a Tuesday, and over the following weekend, we were able to sell it for $330. For a fridge with 3 taps, my 5-lb CO2 tank and regulator, and a 4-way manifold, I think I could have gotten a little more than what I ended up getting, but the most important part was that we had some money to go towards a new unit. I still have the 20-lb CO2 tank, but it was nice having the extra small tank in the garage to use when filling kegs. I’ll keep looking for used tanks online and get one when I find a good deal.

Since we were upgrading in equipment, I also wanted to upgrade in the number of taps.  We had 3 before, so that meant going to 4 or 5. Because we wanted to have that many taps, a fairly large sized chest freezer would be needed, something in the +14 cubic foot range. Elise happened to be looking online at Lowe’s one day and found a 14.8 cubic ft chest freezer that was marked down $150, and since there was only 1 left, we pulled the trigger and bought it!

What will follow is our account of making the chest freezer into our own personal kegerator. In order to make this process easier to read and follow, I’m planning to post in smaller portions instead of one giant, long post.

Reminder: This is not going to be posted to correlate where we are in the project.

It’s already done. It looks awesome. 

Enjoy!