For those who don't know, a "kegerator" is an American term for a contraption which dispenses beer from a keg, via some kind of cooling mechanism, to a tap. Ours has been in the conception phase for months as Gazza has next to zero practical skills, and it's taken Gav joining to push the project through into completion.... which says a lot about Gazza's practical value to the brewery.
But, you ask, how does it work? Well, the keg sits in the conditioning room where it's plugged into the CO2 ring main, 3/8" beer line goes through the insulated wall, through the back of the bottling bench and into an undercounter chiller, then from there into the tap mounted on the side of said bench; it's a simple way to achieve this and, as the whole line run (which is important as less run means less beer sat in the lines getting oxidised and warm) is probably about a metre.
The end result of all this jiggerypokery is that we now have one keg beer on tap in the brewery permanently (with a second to follow when we get the correct connectors) which could be very dangerous, especially when it's really warm weather... rehydration and all that kind of thing.
When it was all installed, cleaned and tested we had to go through one final difficult decision... what beer to put on! After a quick look through the available kegs there was only one real winner in the list and so on goes Citraic.... :-)
Just in case anyone was wondering, the reason we don't have a "caskerator" is that we'd never drink it before it turned, whereas the beauty of keg - one of them - is that it'll last weeks (and theoretically months, although I can't see it lasting that long) so we don't have to rush through it... unfortunately.
Note also the lovely bit of driftwood which Gav has fashioned into a pull.... we've affectionately named it the giant twig!
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| The finished Kegerator! |
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| A little training needed... |
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