Kegerator Conversion

While my original converted fridge kegerator died on Saturday, December 5, 2009, I am back in the game, having inherited another I helped to assemble from my friends Zac and Kate, when they, regrettably, moved to Portland. Becoming again the beneficiary of the sensual and economic glories of an in-home kegerator is cold comfort to the loss of proximity to such great friends, but I am making due.

The abbreviated history of the kegerator.

When we upgraded our kitchen refrigerator a couple of years ago, I decided to put the old one to use in my home brewery. The freezer has become hop storage, and the main portion was used for temperature-controlled fermentation. With time, my wife and I (really! She’s cool like that, and in many, many other ways) decided that there were sufficient positives to converting the fridge to a two-tap kegerator, that we should make the leap.

The first positive, surprising to many, is cost. Keg beer is generally a lot cheaper than bottled beer on a per serving basis. In about a year, we have recouped 70% of the cost (and we didn’t skimp on components, as discussed below) of making the kegerator in beer savings. Pretty soon, our kegerator will be paying us to drink beer, or something like that.

The second positive was environmental. Kegs are simply cleaned by the brewery and refilled. The life of a keg is a long one indeed. While our community has great recycling facilities, recycling glass is a relatively inefficient process that involves (at least with the beers I buy) melting the glass and making new bottles, rather than just cleaning and refilling. While the environmental question is not as simple as the container (how far did the beer travel, by what means, how green is the brewery that produced it, etc.), this aspect appealed to us. While we are cognizant of the other environmental issues, we have not reached definitive answers on them, but continue to explore them.  Here’s a nice article summarizing a study on the impact of bottled versus keg beer and finding a 68% lower impact from kegs:  Read me.

Finally, there was flexibility in serving. Ever had that night where you’d like a little bit more, but not a full bottle? Or perhaps a small glass of beer to accompany your workday lunch? No problem with the kegerator.

The construction of the kegerator:

This was really a very simple project. Literally, an hour of work. Largely, this was due to the fine folks at Micromatic, who helped us spec out our system. I knew that I would be running a lot of hoppy beers through the kegerator, and these can be tough on nickel-plated brass components, so we wanted an all stainless steel system. We also wanted the flexibility of running commercial kegs or homebrew though one or both taps, so that entailed some additional bits and bobs. This was no problem for Micromatic, and they quickly sent a list of parts and part numbers explaining each component’s role.

For the faucets, we decided to go with forward seal models from Shirron/Ventmatic. These have a key advantage over traditional faucets – they don’t stick. While less of a problem in a commercial bar setting, the simple fact is that at my house a tap might go several days or a week without a beer being poured through it. I know it seems impossible, but when you have two taps going, plus whatever is lying around in bottles, plus wine, plus whisky, plus work, plus kids, it can happen.

Making the kegerator was a simple matter of drilling two holes in the door of the refrigerator with a hole saw attached to a drill, and then carefully and tightly assembling all of the pieces. It was neither difficult nor time-consuming. The nice thing about having the taps come through the door is that you don’t have to worry about hitting a refrigerant line that might be running through the side walls of your kegerator. When mine was finished, I had room for my 5lb CO2 cannister, a half barrel and a sixtel (or corny keg), plus some to spare.

The spare room gnawed on me a bit, as only homebrewers are gnawed on by these things. It seemed like enough room for another corny keg, which a quick test run confirmed. Having room for another keg means we can eventually expand to having three kegs on tap at a time. For the time being, I purchased a small manifold which allows me to safely and easily split one of my gas lines, so that I can be serving one keg from it, and carbonating a keg of homebrew at the same time. Our faucets and manifold came from the fine folks at Northern Brewer.