Cool I'll give that a whirl, thanks for the advice.
I'm pretty keen to get into kegging, but i am a little worried I'll just drink to much and get super fat
However, bottling sucks and takes too long.. has anyone had any experience with the
Mangrove Jacks Kegerator? It looks like an easy way to get set up etc.
I have not, and they do look like they are an easy way to get a nice looking kegerator going. My concern would be the taps. I just built a 4 tap keezer (I had just been using picnic taps until recently,) and I spent lot of time researching taps. The front closing taps seemed like a big deal unless you want taps that stick if you don't use them fairly often. But more than that was the fact that most cheap taps, especially those sold in New Zealand, are chrome plated. I read numerous accounts of the chrome wearing off (and being drunk over time) and then exposing your beer to brass which can add some off flavors and who knows what health impact.
Perlick taps really seem to be the way to go but I couldn't find them anywhere in NZ. I found a few stainless steel taps, but I couldn't find forward sealing SS taps, nor could I find a complete set up with stainless shanks and nipples, so I ordered them on ebay from kegworks:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/301419755926
They were a bit more expensive than anything I could find in NZ, especially after shipping, but I probably read 40 forum threads from people saying they went cheaper and eventually needed to replace them with perlicks.
I ended up getting a free chest freezer on trademe, some untreated Popler 2 X 6s and made what I think is a really nice looking keezer.
The cost for the whole thing was about $1750
$0 Chest freezer
$50 untreated popler
$150 approx for paint, stain, angle brackets, hoses, odd bits
$500 for the copper tun 2 keg set (which was more than I needed to pay
$300 for a 5kg C02 bottle
$200 for 2 extra kegs from
http://www.kegs.co.nz/
$50 for a 4 way distributor
$500 for 4 perlick taps, a drip tray, and a growler filler,plus shipping from the US.
So if you compare that to the 3 keg set up from Mangrove Jacks which sells for $1280 (It will be at least $1580 after the C02 bottle) it's about the same considering you could shave off at least $200 from the home made keezer if you had one less keg. Plus I have the ability to add up to 8 kegs with mine, the hardware is likely much better, and I really like the look of the home made one. Plus it feels good to say "I made that". I also could have saved about $200 if I didn't get the coppertun kit and instead pieced it together myself with kegs from
http://www.kegs.co.nz.
But if you didn't want to do it yourself I'd imagine you could always just replace the taps, shank, and nipple on the MJ one
.
Here's a pic of the one I made, before and after...
As for drinking to much... I kind of think I drink less because I can just have a small glass which is often all I feel like, as apposed to the 500ml bottles I normally bottle in. But I can't say that has stopped me from getting fat