Basement Kegerator with Kitchen Faucet

With the amount of beer Sarah and I go through, it made financial sense to invest in a kegerator to replace the cases of Grain Belt we go through. After all, 1 keg at $92 is better than the equivalent 7 cases of beer at a total of $112. ;) Plus there's the cool factor of finally having a tap in the bar.

So after shopping around, we bought a Kegerator Conversion Kit from the Beverage Factory. I also added a new 10 pound CO2 tank thinking that a bigger size would help prevent less runs to the gas company. And then later added a nice stainless drain as well. I chose the door mount kit knowing I'd be making my own faucet box to mount the handle through.

Then I began searching Craigslist for a free fridge I could haul into the basement to use. I see them on there all the time, (except, of course, when I'm actually looking for one.) Eventually, I ended up hauling in the old fridge that's been sitting outside our place for the last three years to see if it would work. After cleaning it up -- a lot -- it ran great and so I decided to use it.

In the meantime, I did find a little fridge on Craigslist for $10 that I thought would make a great soda/beer fridge. So I brought it home to discover the thermostat was faulty. I took it apart (or rather had it explode into 10 or so parts in my hand), and put it back together again after discovering the plastic dial had worn out. I fixed it, put it back together, and now the little fridge is working great keeping the extra bottled beer nice and frosty.

While waiting for the keg kit to show up, I researched various forums in which people discussed their own home keg setups. I quickly discovered that unless the faucet came right from the door, the exposed beer line would cause foamy beer as the beer would warm up in between pours. After a bit of hemming and hawing about glycerin chilling systems and the like, I decided I'd simply try it as is and see how bad the results really were. read more »