Monday, November 8, 2010

Freezer + Kegs = Keezer!

After months of looking at a lot of keezer threads over at Hombrewtalk.com I finally took the plunge and decided to build one of my own. I decided to go with a collar rather than a tower because I didn't want to deal with cutting through the lid of the freezer. I received a lot of inspiration from this design. The addition of a door on the front of the keezer gives the benefits of the tower with the convenience of a collar. The door minimizes the additional height a keg must be lifted in order to get it into the keezer.

I found a killer deal on kegs on Craigslist. Then ordered a custom kit from KegConnections. I have a dual regulator with one leading to a 3-way manifold for the taps. This gives me four CO2 lines so I can carbonate a keg while having 3 others tapped. This way I will have a keg ready to go when one blows. The freezer is a 9 cubic feet Frigidaire that I got from Lowes. It can hold 6 kegs with plenty of space for the CO2 tank.

I apparently forgot to take pictures in the beginning of the build so you'll just have to imagine the first few steps. First I built a base collar out of cedar 2x2s. It is probably good that I don't have pictures of this because my cuts were not pretty and required quite a bit of touch up. After I had the base collar, I built 3/4 of the upper collar out of cedar 2x6s. I put the back wall and sides together then glued the base collar and upper collar together with liquid nails.

Once I had the rigid portion of the collar built, I drilled out the holes for the taps and added the door to the collar. I carved out a portion of the side wall to hide the hinge of the door. It gives the keezer a slightly cleaner look.

Door slightly open

The door has a slight sag when fully open, but that is expected. I did have a problem with the door staying shut. I added a latch to keep the door pressed against the foam tape to minimize air leaks. I added the foam tape on both edges of the door to help keep the freezer more efficient.

Door latch

I attached the collar to the top of the freezer with silicone. I then started installing the hardware. This step actually gave me some problems. The faucet on the far right just did not want to sit properly. This resulted in me spraying sanitizer all over the front of the keezer because it was coming out of the sides of the faucet. After taking it apart and putting it together a few times, I finally got it to sit properly.

Starting to look like a keezer.

I reattached the keezer lid by putting the hinges onto the collar. I then installed the temperature controller into the keezer. I cut the main power to the freezer and wired the controller in to turn it on and off in order to keep the freezer above freezing. Surprisingly, this was probably the easiest part of the whole build. I was expecting issues with the controller.

Keezer!

I had two kegs ready to go into the keezer. The Caribou Slobber and vanilla stout. After a few days of waiting I was finally able to pour some beer!

mmm beer...

I had the double brew day to get the keezer filled at full capacity. The pale ale should be a quick finisher. It will be great to have all three taps pouring. Let me know if you have questions or want more pictures of anything!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Big Brew Day

Before

Today was a first. The first time I've done a double brew day. I needed to kick start the pipeline to get me through the winter. The day started with a trip to the brew store to pick up a box of supplies.

First up was EdWort's Haus Pale Ale. I've made this beer before so it was supposed to be the easy warm up for the day. However, I messed up when writing my list of things to get at the store and I came home with 1 oz too few of hops. Thankfully, I had a half ounce each of Fuggles and Kent Goldings in the fridge that needed a home. I subbed these in to help with the bittering in order to try to keep the aroma coming from the Cascade hops.

After a quick cleaning turnaround I had the water heating up in the brew kettle to steep the grains for my next beer. I am branching out into a new style and doing a holiday spiced beer. I got the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. Jamil's Ol' Yule Loggy recipe is by far the biggest beer I've brewed with an expected original gravity of 1.090.

I had a little boil over with this beer. I looked away for a second before I heard the sound of wort hitting the stove. Thankfully I caught it before it got too bad. Only had a minor clean up to do. It was my first boil over in almost a year. I guess I got a little cocky with that part of my process. The only other thing that could be a problem with this beer is the amount of spice added to the beer. The wort smelled like it had a good amount of spice in it when it was going into the fermentor. It will be interesting to see how that translates into the finished beer.

After

The one issue I still need to figure out is my hydrometer. Both of these beers had an original gravity reading of about 20 points too low. After staring at the fermentors for awhile I am beginning to wonder if i am not getting the wort and additional water mixed together well enough. I think it might be a case of the water sitting on top of the wort. This is something I need to pay attention to in my next brew.