If you like the idea of enjoying cold draft beer in the comfort of your own home, but buying a new kegerator is not in your budget, don't despair. For a fraction of the cost of a new kegerator, you can build your own. Building your own kegerator can be accomplished some with basic household tools, and just a minor amount of do-it-yourself skills. On a do-it-yourself difficulty scale of 1 to 10, this job is about a 2. Your homemade kegerator can easily be completed in about an hour.
The first thing you need to do is get a refrigerator. Used refrigerators can often be found for little or no cost. Depending upon how much room you have for your kegerator, and how much beer you'd like it to hold, you could either go with an upright (kitchen style) refrigerator, or a mini fridge. Obviously, an upright will provide you more space for beer, other drinks, mixers, food, and ice. The benefits of the mini fridge style are space savings and energy savings. If you choose to go with a mini fridge, measure the interior dimensions of the unit to make sure it is big enough to hold a keg with a coupler on top of it, and a 5 or 10lb CO2 bottle with pressure regulator. Some mini fridges are too small to be used as kegerators. Below are the dimensions of commonly used kegs:
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Beverage, or Cornelius Keg: (popular among home brewers) 25" tall, 8.5" diameter - holds 53 12oz servings of beer 1/6 Barrel: 23.3" tall, 9.25" diameter - holds 55 servings 1/4 Barrel, or pony keg: (comes in two sizes) Short measures 14.8" tall by 17" diameter. Slim measures 23.3" tall by 11". - Both hold 82 beers. 1/2 Barrel: 23.3" tall, 17" diameter - serves 165 12oz beers.
Once you've selected the appropriate refrigerator, you'll need to choose your kegerator kit. All of the parts included in these kits can be purchased separately, but we highly recommend using a kegerator kit, rather than buying individual parts. First of all, the kits generally save you a few dollars, and secondly you'll have everything you need, and it will all be compatible. As an extra bonus, most kits come with detailed instructions specific to building a kegerator using the parts enclosed, as well as any necessary specialty tools. When choosing your kegerator kit, you'll need to decide how many taps you want (i.e. how many different types of beer you want to serve at once) and if you want a basic kit, or one with more bells and whistles.
Next, assemble the tools necessary to build your kegerator. Even though the kegerator kits typically include any specialty tools that are needed, you will need a few basic household tools. You'll need the following tools to complete the job:
Electric Drill 1/8" drill bit 1", 2" and 3" hole saws Flat and Philips head screwdrivers Needle nose pliers Adjustable wrench Level
Now that you have everything you need for your home made kegerator, it's time to get to work. Remove all of the shelves from the refrigerator and thoroughly clean the inside. Check the floor of the refrigerator for level. If it is not, you need to build up the floor to make it flat and level. This can easily be done with some plywood, 2x2s, and a few shims.
Drilling a hole for the tap
If you are building a mini fridge style of kegerator, you need to decide if you're going to have a top mounted, tower style tap, or are you going to mount the tap in the door. If you're building a top mounted tap, you should remove the interior plastic top panel to expose all of the coolant lines. You need to be very careful not to damage to refrigerator's coolant lines, or you will have to start over with a new fridge. If you are building an upright style of kegerator, the tap will be drilled through the door, which has no coolant lines, so this is not a concern.
If you're building an upright kegerator conversion, mark a point (or points) on the outside of the door where you would like to place the tap(s). Make sure that the spigots will be elevated enough to clear the keg and coupler, and that they are centered. Drill a 1/8" pilot hole for the shank holes. Make sure that this hole goes all the way through the door. Once you have your pilot hole, drill a 1" shank hole in the outside of the door for the faucet, using your drill and the 1" hole saw. Drill a larger 2" or 3" hole on the inside of the door, using one of the larger-bore hole saws. Fit your shank into the door with the flange against the outside, and the nut tightened onto the inside of the outer panel of the door. (The larger hole on the inside allows access so you can tighten the shank nut.) If you're building a mini fridge kegerator, do the same thing to the top of the unit, being very careful not to damage the coolant lines.
Assembly
Installing a drip tray in either kegerator style is simple. For a regular size kegerator, use the drip-tray mounting bracket to mark out the mounting holes and drill them in the door. For a tower style mini-fridge, we recommend a self-contained spill tray that is manually emptied.
We recommend that you buy a beer line cleaning kit, and thoroughly clean all the beer lines before hooking them up. Then hook up the beer and gas lines, flush them and sanitize them again. Prior to pressurizing the system, make sure that all hose clamps are tightened, that the CO2 tank is secured, and the temperature in your kegerator is between 33 and 38 degrees. After you have hooked up your keg and pressurized the system, start out at 13psi as a pressure setting, and adjust from there to achieve proper carbonation level for your beer. If the beer pours with too much head, lower the pressure. If it comes out of the tap slowly, or appears flat, raise the pressure.
The final step is to relax with a fresh draft beer, and think about all the money you saved by building your own kegerator.
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Nov 21, 2011 09:08:00
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