One thing to note is that while I did buy a lot of new parts, I had a 20lb CO2 tank and most of my ball valves already from my previous kegerator.  Here is a quick overview of my costs:

• Freezer – $220
• 4way manifold (also prevents backflow) $61
• Refrigerator Thermostat $58
• 4 Perlick taps (used on ebay) $113
• 4  four inch shanks with barbs attached $58
• 13″ Drip tray $50
• Odds and ends hoses $35
• two ball locks (remember, I already had 3 beers on tap so I had some parts)
• Mat for the floor of the freezer $9

For anyone familiar with kegging and beer flow, I used 3/16 hose at 5″ for each tap to minimize foamy beer.  Here is how I came up with this:

1. Beer line temp: 38-40f
2. Keg pressure (psi): 12-15
3. volumes of CO2: 2-3 on most beers
4. beer line ID: 3/16
5. Rise to tap: 1′
6. beer line temp: cold

Here is how it works out: 5 ‘ Length = 12psi(1′rise x.5)-1)/R (line resistance)=2

I know it’s a little confusing, but if you Google line resistance/ beer line length, there are a lot of great resources.  Every situation is unique so I don’t want anyone to think they should just copy what I’m doing.

To finish the whole thing off I painted it with white extra-glossy indoor/outdoor paint.  I had considered finishing the wood and doing some fancy stuff, but at the end of the day, it was a few weeks worth of work already and I didn’t feel that the extra effort was going to increase my satisfaction with the whole thing.  The extra glossy is a must because beer WILL SPILL and you want a slick surface.

If you add in wood and about a million trips to the hardware store, I had close to $600 wrapped up into this project (including the $220 for the freezer).  But, in the end, I have this:

And here is the video on how it all came together.

For anyone that does not have experience in priming a non-self priming pump, you are essentially trying to remove all the air from the pump  so that suction can be created.  This takes a few minutes and one thing that is helpful to to make sure that your exit hose is held straight up from the pump.  This helps purge any air that could be lingering in the pump head.  Give it time.  Make sure you wait a few minutes for the process to take place.  Finally, once you have the pump primed, the next few times it happens much easier.

On another note, using the pump to chill the beer is not a great way to work.  It’s very slow (took about an hour to chill 10 gallons compared to 30 min the other way and I had to keep feeding ice into the reservoir.  I am going to re-think this one a bit and see what I can come up with, perhaps a snowbank bath first to knock off the first 50 digrees or something.  I’m not sure, but I am not giving up on this one…

Cheers.

Over all, I would say this project came out to about $220 give or take some money.  The large expenses were the pump, the shock buster outlet adapter (to keep from electrocuting myself) , and the quick release valves which will allow me to easily change the pump from sparge water to circulating my water for the chiller.

Below is a video I made about the project.  The pump is working and the project was really easy.  It should be a handy addition to my brew process and save me from another hernia operation:

Well I was VERY wrong.  This thermometer was a long way off from accurate.  I am assuming that it has something to do with it’s use in liquid as opposed to solids, but it was nonetheless VERY inaccurate and cost us .020 on our brew!  Why you ask?  Well we were shooting for 150 f as the strike temp.  Since I was using this thermometer and it was off on the strike, the mash bed temp was low on our readings, but was still reading 148.  I made an on the fly decision to run with the 148 as opposed to adding some hot water fast.

From there, everything was way off and we were probably closer to 135f in our mashtun.  It was really bad.

What is probably most frustrating is that I should have known better.  I should have tested the thermometer and been second guessing my readings with a second thermometer (what I’ve done in the past).  But alas I didn’t and it was a huge mistake.

It’s too bad, but lesson learned.  I guess this is Californication Lite.  Now the questions is answered; what is the most important tool in your brewday tool box?  Your thermometer.

FOLLOW UP:

I’m not sure if you can see from this picture, but one of my dial thermometers is in a glass of water with the probe of the other thermometer.  The dial thermometer is reading 60f, roughly room temp, while the probe is reading 88f.  That’s a 28f difference!!!  Makes sense that all my readings were off for the day.

Grrr, don’t buy your brewing equipment from Kmart (duh, right?).

UPDATE: FG 1.012, doesn’t taste half bad.  The flavors are a little more intense, but otherwise its good.

It’s Alive!

So after this weekend’s fight with my tap setup over getting to my sump pump, I decided to make some changes.  Initially I was concerned about making this move.  I was worried that I would get into it and realize that it was a bad idea, or that it was not possible, or that I would break something.  But alas I was the recipient of a late Christmas miracle.

As you may remember, originally this was a corner piece of a counter top from my in-laws house after a renovation.  The inspiration was my thought that I could make good use of the space above my sump pump that was otherwise useless.  Since this weekend’s decision to make my changes, I came up with the idea to cut off the side of the counter top that did not have the tap system attached to it.  After further thought, I came up with the idea to use that part of the counter top as a wheeled base for the kegged and tapped part.

That’s when Tappenstein was born! 

As you can see from the picture above, it’s a pretty simple design, the mini-fridge provides the cold for the corney kegs, the tap is mounted to the counter top.  There is a computer fan on the inside of the fridge to circulate the cold and the CO2 is held outside of the system.

I picked up some wheels, two swiveling with breaks and two fixed, and mounted them to the cut-off piece of counter top with nuts and bolts.  I had to add some support to make sure that the newly made cart didn’t break, but it was good to go.

One of the parts of this that I thought was going to be a problem was getting the tap system up onto the cart with out breaking the system or my back.  It went surprisingly smoothly and I had it centered on the cart in a matter of a few short minutes.

As you can see from the image above, the wheeled cart is centered under the original tap box and now, not only is my sump pump accessible, but I can also wheel my kegs around the basement!  Whats more, the whole project took me about 4 hours and cost $22 ($12 for wheels and $10 for nuts, bolts and washers).  I have to say that I am surprised that it went as smoothly as it did.  These projects usually have some kind of hiccups in the process that slows me down.

Moving forward, I have thought about running some nice stained plywood around the sides and over the top to close things up.  I thought this might be a good way to close things up and give it a nice finish.

Cheers!

Now the problem occurred when this weekend my sum pump became disconnected from the PVC pipe that takes the water out of the basement.  What made matters worse was that we were in the midst of a CNY heatwave and there was a lot of snow melting.  So I spent a few hours on Saturday night taking my whole sup pump setup apart and putting it back together tight enough so that it worked.

Now because my system is set up in the corner, over the sum pump, it was a HUGE problem to get at my ailing pump.  This caused me to take a few moments and asses how I can make this process a little easier while still providing myself with cold beer.

I’ve devised a plan that I am going to be “rolling” out in the next few days.  I made some preliminary measurements last night and I think that with a few cuts, some wheels and some slight adjustments, I can make my “tap and box” mobile and more contained.  More to come on this…

Cheers.

This is the cascade and fuggles vines. The fuggles on the right is not producing anything, but the cascade is looking great!!!

There are quite a few cones on there and they are coming along nicely. There are some hairs on them, but they still seem small compared to some of the hops cones I see in other pictures. I am thinking that next weekend I might pick a few and dry them because some are further along than others.

This is a nice shot of the head to head between the cascade (on the right) and the centennial. I am quite sure the centennial are ready as they are REALLY smelly and look a lot more open than the cascade. The cascade cone pictured on the right is more mature than most of the others on the vine so I am going to give it more time.

As you can see from the pictures above, the centennial hops did not do as well, I only expect to harvest a few ounces at best with this one. Hopefully next year all hops will be putting out a bigger harvest. I am pleased with this year as a whole though.

Cheers.

Fist off the logic behind PVC over copper. While to date, copper has been the primary false bottom for me, two major factors contributed to the move to PVC – price and workability. Copper has gotten pretty expensive in the last few months so I have been less inclined to use it than in the past. Also, the problems we have had with the soldiering have led me to think that I am not much of a plumber.

With PVC we will glue, cut and puncture with 1/2 of the effort and time of copper. Plus the PVC we got is rated at over 180f so it should hold up without a problem. So we’re off:

First off was taking out the plug and putting in the ball valve. It turned out that the hole that was left from the plug was 3/4in instead of the 1/2in we planned on so we used a 3/4in pipe (2″ in length) that was threaded on both sided to fill the hole.

We ended up using copper fittings that drew down the 3/4in to 1/2in for the ball valve and for the part that was going to connect to the PVC.

Sealing was obviously a big part of this and it’s an imperfect science at best. The key to sealing is to keep an open mind. With this we had a gasket on the inside and one on the outside. It leaked so I removed the one on the inside and used some gasket making stuff and it is now sealed. To test it, I put 5 gallons of water in over night. About 1tbs of water leaked out over the 12 hrs so I figure that’ “good enough for government”.

Finally Nick built the PVC false bottom. The design is pretty self explanatory and he used a dermal tool to make the cuts for draining holes. All the parts are glued and the whole thing sits inside of the other PVC fitting that is connected to the copper. We are waiting on gluing that until we know that the whole thing is going to work properly.

On to the future. My father had a mini fridge that he was willing to donate to the cause, so I decided to give this design another shot. After reading a few kegerator ideas on Adam’s blog, I saw this idea where the fridge has the door removed and a fan inside it to circulate the air. After some measurements and a little planning, I decided this was the way to go moving forward.

In the process of taking apart the kegerator, I was able to explore some of the issues that I had had with it, like the fact that it only fit 2 kegs and the tap I hod could work 3 beers. In making room on the sidewall for the new dorm fridge, I was able to make some adjustments to make space for the 3rd keg.

Now three kegs fit into the kegerator. After a lot of time sealing and taping, I have the kegerator down to a steady 47f. I am not sure if the fridge is running constantly, but when I was testing it, it got down to 39f and was kicking on and off so I feel pretty good about the potential for this one.

Finally, because I did not have to mount the fridge on the top of the box, I was able to move the tap back and utilize one of the holes that the fridge used before. This will allow me to have a bar runner on there so that I’m not dripping into a bucket. I know what you’re thinking, I decided to avoid the drip tray and go for the bar runner because of the price difference, I am getting a bar runner for $6 with shipping, a drip tray that is big enough for 3 taps is over $50. Plus standing beer stinks no matter what’s holding it. IMHO anyway.

In other news, as I’ve been mentioning on Twitter, our 100qt cooler came in and it was WELL worth the $38 (with shipping) I paid. These things go for over $100 and this one was listed as “used”, but it looks pretty new to me. The size difference is pretty staggering – Look at the other two mash tuns I was using next to it.

I placed a “wanted” ad up on Craigslist offering $10-$15 per keg for soda kegs. Initially I considered trying to trade beer for kegs, but quickly realized that that was not kosher with ATF so halted that. I got a response in the first few days with someone offering 10 to 15 kegs if I was interested. I told him I would take 10 and he asked for $120. Shown below is what I got.

I really lucked out because these kegs were in very good shape. They all still had remnants of soda in them, but for $12 a piece that’s what you get.

Tonight I cracked them all open and freed them of the sweet carbonated monster of soda. I started by dumping and rinsing each of them out, sure to keep like caps with one another (some get bent and only create a good seal with the keg they were bent with). After talking with Nick and doing a little research, I decided to give bleach a chance. I used 1.5 cups of bleach per 2 gallons of water on four of the kegs. The other six kegs I used one gallon of one step

My hope is to get a better idea of which is going to work better in the future. However, already bleach and I did not get off to a good start as I think I got some on my good jeans.

Per Nick’s suggestion, I pressurized all of them with the cleaning solution in there and I am going to shake them up once or twice a day for the next few days. In the meantime I am going to get some gaskets for the nipples, but not the large cap for the top as I don’t think those matter as much. When I get to changing the gaskets, I am going to take all of them apart and clean them out thoroughly.

***UPDATE – After the messages from Trout I went home and dumped all the bleach filled kegs. They were fine and all the soda smells were gone so no harm no foul. The ones that I used one-step with did not work. They still stunk of soda so I made up some of the beer line cleaning solution that I got from Ed a while back and used that for the six kegs that had the One-Step. It worked like a champ! All smells were gone and they are airing out as we speak. It makes the beer line cleaning solution the most desirable solution because it’s quick (don’t soak it over night because it’s capable of stripping chrome and stainless) it’s meant for drinking and it’s not all that corrosive to the hands or clothes. Win win in my book.

This made for a good night – The bad news is that I think my mini-fridge finally died. I talked to my father and he has an old dorm fridge at the house they are not using that he said I could have so I will be onto other project, but old brown fridge will me missed…