Chest Freezer Kegerator Conversion Has Six Beers On Tap

June 25, 2013 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

keg-freezer-conversion

Drawing a pitcher of frosty cold beer out of your own keg fridge is a liberating feeling which [Danodemano2] can enjoy all the time since he pulled off this 6-tap chest freezer conversion. You won’t have to kill yourself to get it done, this image shows the custom cuff sitting between the chest freezer body and lid which is where all the added hardware is anchored.

Chest freezers are popular because they’re efficient. And let’s face it, if you’re going to devote an appliance to storing cold beer you better make certain it doesn’t drive up utility bills. That’s the reason for the rigid foam insulation around the ring, with the spray foam to ensure energy isn’t lost around the openings in the wooden frame.

This design goes above and beyond the functionality from the last offering we looked at. That one had a pretty nice tile job, but the finished wood contrasts the black freezer very nicely on this one. It’s the PC fan used for circulation and the properly terminated wiring that we really like. The one thing we wonder about is the feasibility of fitting all six corneilus kegs and the carbon dioxide tank into this beast.

[via Reddit]

Kitchen Island Monitors And Distributes Home Brew Beer

November 21, 2012 by Mike Szczys 2 Comments

This piece of furniture actually resides in [Matt Pratt’s] livingroom but we think it would make a perfect kitchen island. The base is a chest freezer modified to keep the beer inside at just the right temperature. But this doesn’t just dispense the beer, the system is designed to tell you how many pints are left in each keg.

The freezer offers enough room for four five-gallon Cornelius kegs. [Matt] salvaged the weight sensors from some cheap bathroom scales and rigged them up with some plywood discs to serve as the base for each keg. After working out the electronics to reliably read from the sensors (which was no small job) he hooked them up to a microcontroller and a touch screen. As you can see in the video after the break, the system calculates the number of pints left in each keg based on its weight. This can be easily calibrated using the touch screen.

He didn’t talk all that much about the control hardware, but having see his post about ARM LCD dev boards we’d bet that’s what he’s using here.

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This Fire Extinguisher Serves Frothy Beverages

December 19, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

[Ben Krasnow’s] friends always want him to bring a fire extinguisher to their parties, not for safety reasons, but to quench their thirst. You see, [Ben] uses old fire extinguishers as kegs for his home-brewed beer. They’re not all that different from the Cornelius kegs that most home brew setups use; they’re intended to dispense liquids under pressure, include a liquid exhaust valve, and a gas pressure valve. All he had to do was clean the stainless steel parts extremely well, replace the gaskets, and modify the input valve to use a quick connect for his CO2 system. For good measure he also added a low pressure meter to let you know the carbonation level.

Recently, he installed a home tap system that uses two of the extinguisher kegs. Our favorite part is the refrigerated hose loop that uses a fan to circulate cold air from the fridge all the way to taps.