The Cold Bottom Kegerator

[Will319]

This is going to be Epic. I bought a Beverage Air DD68 off of craigslist three years ago and haven’t gotten around to personalizing it. Now that the Cold Bottom Brewery is done I need somewhere to start serving my beers from. A link to the brewery is below:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f170/cold-bottom-brewery-391263/

So I scored the Draft Cooler for $250. It was one of those right place, at the right time deals. It had to go that day and it was running when I got it. The bar was undergoing a Bar Rescue type renovation and the floors were being refinished the next day. I have had it sitting around ever since. It had 4 years of use.

Here is a picture of it while I was tearing it down.

[IMG="http://www.flickr.com/photos/63246545@N02/8738576982/in/photostream"]

It has 2 towers, and all of the faucets are gummed up. Needless to say the beer lines are trashed, and I am thinking about replacing the air lines as well while I am at it. The regulator HP gauge busted when we were moving it. The HP gauges are pretty worthless, and I doubt the tank will leak through that.

My ideas for it are as follows:

2 Commercial 1/2 Barrels and 4 Corney kegs.

6 Perlick faucets, I think I am going to go with 2 of the 3 way tower kits from Beverage factory for $184 each. They come with new lines and for that price I can’t buy new Perlicks and a tower extender, that’s also with using old equipment.

It has a floor drain hose, which I think I am going to cut off and run to a bucket on top of the compressor hump on the inside. I don’t have access to a drain at this time to run it into.

I am also going to put a 2.5 gal corney of starsan on the compressor hump with a cobra tap. This I found comes in handy for cleaning and not mixing up 5gallons of the stuff and feeling obligated to use it all.

I took the vents off and am going to shoot some compressed air around the compressor to get the dirt and dust out of it so it can breathe.

My Blichmann beergun will be stored on the inside of one of the doors and my Randall will be mounted to the other door.

At this time the CO2 bottle will remain on the outside because I am coming to the realization that this thing is going to be packed with stuff.

The inside will get a cleaning and the black paint will get a new coat. I think I will get some gator grit and a buffing pad for a grinder and give the stainless a polish while the taps are off of it.

Issues I am running into:

The old Beverage line was 5/16 and the gas line was 7/16. It seems what everyone is selling now is 3/16 beverage line and 5/16 gas line. Does anyone know if this will cause any issues in serving?

It has a 3 way distributor for the gas and a splitter off of one of the lines. I think I am just going to get another cheap manifold and run 1 pressure 6 ways. Does anyone see any issues with this?

Bev Air wants $133 for a caster kit. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for replacement casters?

I originally wanted to run 6 Flow control faucets, but decided against it due to crowding on the draft towers.

Thanks for the advice and I will keep you posted with progress pictures as it gets completed.

 

[Stealthcruiser]

Link no worky of the tear down pics, Brother.

 

[Will319]

I never have luck on getting pictures to post on here. Does anyone know the correct format that I am supposed to use?

 

[Stealthcruiser]

I feel your pain!

 

[Will319]

I finally figured out how to get pictures to work on here. Here is the picture of it as I was cleaning and tearing it down. Many more to come this weekend. Stay tuned.

 

[day_trippr]

[...lots of edits to cut down to the questions...]

- 6 Perlick faucets

- They come with new lines

- The old Beverage line was 5/16 and the gas line was 7/16. It seems what everyone is selling now is 3/16 beverage line and 5/16 gas line. Does anyone know if this will cause any issues in serving?

- It has a 3 way distributor for the gas and a splitter off of one of the lines. I think I am just going to get another cheap manifold and run 1 pressure 6 ways. Does anyone see any issues with this?

- Bev Air wants $133 for a caster kit. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for replacement casters?

o fyi, Perlick is discontinuing the 525 Perls and will be replacing them with a new design called the 630.

o if you order any dispensing kit, specifically request the beer lines be 3/16" ID and at least 10' long each. If you don't you can almost guarantee the lines shipped will be only 5' long which will most likely cause you to end up contributing yet another "Help! My pours are all foam!" thread to the forum.

o beer lines should certainly be 3/16" ID. Gas lines can be whatever will fit the existing gas barbs on your system. That said, there's no reason to go with the old school 5/16" ID gas lines unless the barbs won't fit 1/4" ID gas line.

o do yourself a favor and don't totally cheap out on a gas distributor. Get one fitted with shut-off valves with integrated anti-backflow check valves and MFL threads instead of barbs.

o check out castercity.com.

Cheers!

 

[Will319]

A few things have changed in the plan since the original post. I went and ordered the 2, 3 tap towers from Beverage Factory with 6 perlick flow controls, the 545pc ones. They fit fine on the towers. I had been running 2 commercial sankes all summer with micromatic couplers. These have integrated check valves on the gas in sides. I got behind the 8 ball before a party and just ran 2 sankes off of a gas tee to split the gas in line. Last weekend I finally got some time to reconfigure the gas lines to more closely resemble my end goals. Right now I'm in the process of updating the post with pictures of my progress so far. I went ahead and bought a 8 way MFL splitter from Farmhouse Brew Supply. The intent is to have 2 lines going to my commercial kegs, 4 to my corneys, 1 to my beergun, and one to a spare keg of starsan. The corney kegs will have check valves close to the posts. Now that its clean, I plan to seal the inside seams with some clear silicone to keep moisture from working itself into the same low corner and causing a rust problem later on. I am going to use GE Silicone II because that is neutral curing and wont put acid into the galvanized and stainless and cause more of a rust problem. Thanks for the recommendation on Caster City. Ill check them out.

 

[Will319]

I added the 6 perlick flow control faucets on the 2 new towers. They work and look great. I am definitely glad I went with them.

I refinished the stainless steel top based on the instructions in this video:



There was some minor specs of rust that could have eventually pitted in the surface.

I used different grit Scotch Brite pads and ran with the grain. Stainless Magic is a good cleaner to use as long as you take the time to buff it.

I took out the temporary gas and beverage line setup I used all summer, cleaned and dried the cooler out.

I was starting to have some rust on the low end of the cooler. This was from the condensation in the summer laying in the same spot. I went ahead while it was clean and dry took some GE Silicone II to all the seams on the inside. GE silicone II is Neutral Curing and wont put acids into the stainless and galvenized, causing rust later on. I figured this would also help to keep it sealed from air leaks.

I added the 8 way Co2 distributor that I purchased from Farmhouse Brewing. It works great with no leaks so far. A good feature is that you can change the side of the Co2 in line depending on where you want your tank to be.

The plan is to have the first one run the beer gun the next 6 to run the kegs and the last one to my Star-San keg, which will feed out a picnic faucet.

Lastly I added some decoration to it

The next project is to organized my lines with cable ties and maybe some labels from a label machine. I am a little OCD like that. It is getting a little jumbled in there.

One thing I am looking for are wall mounted clips for my gas line from the tank to the distributor. I want to keep it high and out of the way of the kegs. And I am always looking for corneys.