Want to enjoy your freshly brewed beer without the hassle of bottling? It’s time to build your own kegerator and pour the perfect pint straight from the tap!
I wanted to share some photos of my adventures of building a kegerator. I started off with a RCA 7.1 Cu Ft chest freezer. I ordered it from Walmart, so it could be just delivered to my house. Its important to know the height of your kegs for this next part to determine how tall you want your collar (wood part that sits on top of the freezer) to be. Here I placed the keg in the freezer. With chest freezers there is the deep part and the shelf that the motor sits below, so take both of those into consideration.
I then figured out what lumber I needed, I don’t remember the exact size, but something like a 1×8 or 1×10 hardwood board, like poplar or oak. As you can see, there is an inside and outside of the collar, I left the width of the board between them. Then lastly for installation, I used spray foam installation to keep the cool in and the hot out.
From here, I figured out how far apart I wanted my taps to be. It would be good to have your taps for measurement.
I was now able to drill all 4 holes and start preparing the food for finish.
I stained it with a oil finish and a pretty light natural color, but here is your chance to customize it to what you would like.
I now have the collar sitting on the freezer and also attached the lid to the collar.
If you seen my toolbox post, you would see it has wheels. Well I decided to do something similar here, so I could move it easily in the garage (and clean around it).
Since a freezer main purpose is to freeze, its important to use some type of temperature controller to manage the temperature. This one you plug the freezer into the controller, then set the temperature to your desired on and off, eg on at 38 degrees and off at 33 degrees. The controller would have a temperature probe that you need to also put in the freezer.
Here is a photo of the gas regulator. It allows you to use 1 CO2 tank for multiple kegs. I then ran the gas lines to the kegs (red lines here), and the clear lines are the beer out lines to the taps.
I ended up buying a CO2 regulator that would allow multiple pressures depending on your beer. I did dedicate one keg to root beer, so I typically ran higher levels of gas to that keg.
Once again, this is the final product. I did find this project took a decent amount of homework, as I was starting with nothing. I had to purchase Kegs, the freezer, wood to build collar, CO2, gas regulator, gas distribution, taps, lines, and temperature controller. I am sure I forgot something in that list as well. Overall I am very happy with how the kegerator turned out and found it to be a very rewarding experience, especially when you can enjoy a nice cold beer.
