Building a new basement bar and using this as an opportunity to start kegging. Any good recommendations for equipment, specifically under counter fridges/kegerators and draft towers? Tips to avoid problems with building a bar around a system? Looking to do 3 5-gallon kegs. Appreciate any insight!
I recently bought an outdoor kegerator made by a company called Edgestar. We’re building an outdoor kitchen, but in the meantime, I’ve just had it on the back porch. I really like it. It’s a 2 tap model and will hold 3 cornies at a time. The thing I really like is that it’s air flow cooled and it has a duct to direct cold air up the tap tower to keep the lines cold, thus no foaming. It came with cheap taps, so I switched those out for Perlicks. The whole thing was a little pricey, but well worth it in my opinion.
Forward-sealing perlicks are are fantastic. Worth the money.
As far as cooling element/chamber, you can really use anything if you are handy enough to run some short lines through a fridge, then countertop/bartop and a tap tower. Bevair is the gold standard, but they pricey…actually you can only use real gold to buy them 
There are pics somewhere on here of someone running his lines through a wall actually, with a tiled backsplash with faucets installed into it. Someday…
[quote=“Pietro”]Forward-sealing perlicks are are fantastic. Worth the money.
As far as cooling element/chamber, you can really use anything if you are handy enough to run some short lines through a fridge, then countertop/bartop and a tap tower. Bevair is the gold standard, but they pricey…actually you can only use real gold to buy them
There are pics somewhere on here of someone running his lines through a wall actually, with a tiled backsplash with faucets installed into it. Someday…[/quote]I might be wrong but I think that is Ken Lenard.
have been looking into the Edgestar kegerators…look sharp enough to show off in the bar and seem to have reasonable reviews. any problem with yours so far?
if the taps are the only “cheap” aspect of this, i’m sold. can always replace those as well with something higher quality. after looking around, this seems to be one of the better 3-tap options out there that’s not a big do-it-yourself project.
No problems whatsoever, but I haven’t had it that long either. I was impressed that the beer stayed nice and cold in it even when the ambient temp was 102.
I’ve got a couple systems in my garage. No matter how cold your lines are, if outside, prepare for a few seconds of foam when the cold beer flows through the warmer faucets.
I will agree 100% with the Perlicks. If you’re talking about having a kegerator and “building around it” just make sure you leave yourself plenty of room to work. I’d guess you want something that looks pretty permanent, which might make it difficult to keep things easily accessible. Just remember the tasks that you will have, loading full kegs, unloading empty kegs, cleaning lines, changing CO2 tank etc… And there’s always the possibility of having spilled beer to clean up on the bottom of the kegerator. So if you build some kind of counter over the top of it, make it easily removable just in case. See if you can find something front loading maybe? Leave enough room behind the bar to remove/replace the unit if you ever need to.
But most importantly, have fun and learn from the mistakes that you’re likely to make (if you’re anything like me) and share your findings with the rest of us.
:cheers:
