It’s always a good idea to keep a few brews in the fridge ready to go, but being able to offer your guests a fresh-poured draught beer is another step above. It’s not trivial, but with a few kegs, a freezer and the right CO2 parts, it’s achievable for the average hacker. [Ben Brooks] had a keezer (keg freezer) setup that had been doing the job quite well, but wanted to take things up a notch.
Wishing to know when it was time to start brewing more beer, [Ben] needed a way to measure how much was left in the individual kegs. Opting to weigh them, initial experiments with a hand-made capacitive sensor failed when moisture in the freezer began to ruin the sensor’s performance. Switching to a strain-gauge based setup enabled more accurate readings to be taken with no drift over time. Solenoids were added to enable the taps to be shutdown outside of beer o’clock, and a Particle Photon and Raspberry Pi were put to work to give the whole project a slick web interface. There’s even a monitor to show guests what’s on tap!
It’s a tidy improvement to a home keg setup, and ensures [Ben]’s guests won’t be left thirsty in the middle of a party. We’ve seen other instrumented beer rigs before, too. If you’re working on your own homebrewing masterpiece, be sure to drop us a line.
How does frozen beer come out of a tap?
A temperature controller cycles the freezer on/off to maintain a warmer user-selected temperature.
Ben NICE JOB!! I’d love to know the parts you used for this setup. I’m not looking to add shut off solenoids but it’s a nice touch. The strain gauge for keg weight/volume is the most interesting part. A keezer is a future step from the sanyo kegger. Cheers!!
Thanks! It’s been a fun tinkering project the last few years, but definitely glad to have it ‘done’, for now at least.
I put a full component list on the project page:
https://hackaday.io/project/167023-keezer-kegtapbeer-controller
If you have a 3D printer, the scales can be printed which makes for a very quick and easy assembly.
Let me know if you need any other info!
And I thought my keezer was nerdy when I used a Smart things multipurpose sensor to track temperatures and detect of it’s been opened along with a z-wave power monitor to track the duty cycle of the freezer and to alert me if it’s stopped working…. This setup takes it to a new level. The one party trick I like with my setup is “Hey Google, what’s my beer temperature.” “Your beer is 34 degrees.”
Very cool! I actually set mine up some time ago to allow me to turn it on/off via the Google Assistant, but to be honest you just reminded me. Clearly I don’t use it very often!