Kegs Galore

Sunday evening, after the kids were in bed, I was joined by a few good friends from my neighborhood as well as Bob from ATK's neighborhood in tapping my new kegs of beer.

A while back, my wife agreed to get me a 2-tap kegerator for my birthday. Fantastic. It is a lovely piece of gear that holds 2 5-gallon homebrew kegs. I had to swap out a few parts and pieces because the kegerator, while boasting a 2-keg capacity, comes with parts for commercial kegs. Homebrew kegs require different hook-ups. But some simple swaps of a few inexpensive widgets later, I am pumping kegs!

I currently have a British Pale Ale and a Scottish 80 Shilling Ale (the heaviest of the lighter Scottish beers) on tap right now. This weekend, I plan to get an Irish Red in a fermenter so that when one of the kegs blows, I should have another beer finished and ready to go. And this is my goal; two beers in kegs, one beer in a fermenter. Always fresh beer on tap!

I still plan to bottle some beers, especially my bigger beers like the Russian Imperial Stout that need to be bottle conditioned and aged. But for the most part, I plan to serve-up pleasant, drinkable "session beers" out of my taps.

Having now disassembled and reassembled the kegerator and all of its parts, it is a very intuitive, easy-to-use and easy-to-clean appliance. Between batches, I can partially fill a keg with some cleaner, put it under pressure, and force cleaner and rinser and even sanitizer through the lines. And once every few batches I can easily take apart the whole thing and clean it; it is exceedingly easy.

Though Mrs. Smitty tried not to show her unbridled excitement at having a fine Scottish beer whenever she wants it, I caught beaming grins when she thought I wasn't looking. I just want to point out to people: Mrs. Smitty likes beer, likes my homebrewing hobby, bought me a kegerator, and likes hockey. I won. Game over.

The little makeshift kegerator I made just to get used to kegging and what all goes into it is slated for the dump, unless one of our esteemed readers wants it.

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Beer Fridges

Many of us here at ATK live the suburban dream. 2-story houses, white pickett fences, 2.5 kids and a dog.

Well, okay. Maybe some of us are former-enlisted military guys with short fuses, barely-employed state workers, political wanks and the like. Our suburban "dream" is merely a facade that covers-up otherwise seething mental disorders, but that's why we drink beer.

And in order to add more pleasure to our collective drinking experience, many of us, in our suburban dream houses, wish to install some sort of beer delivery device, and what better way to do so than to occupy our idle, suburban hands with a little DIY project!First, fellow Marine and ATK newcomer Christian links to a guy who converted a normal 25 cu ft fridge into a 4-tap kegerator. Christian has a dream, people, and it is a 4-tap beer fridge. We like Christian here.

From kegworks.com, the definitive keg and keg conversion web site, check out their conversion kits. They have an outdoor keg and some tutorials on building your home bar.

If you are not a member at Beer Advocate.com, which I again assume all of our ATK contributors are, they have a whole forum specific to kegging and fridge-to-kegerator conversions using all matter of freezers and fridges: dorm-sized dealies, chest freezers, normal fridges and the like.

There are a gazillion more resources out there, including an article in Zymurgy magazine (which I could try to scan and add later to this post). Know some? Add 'em in the comments.

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