Grill and Barrel

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to tackle converting my mini fridge to a kegerator this past weekend. I am pleased to report that this project was much easier than I expected. It still requires some tweaking to dial in the perfect draft beer but I think that would hold true with most commercial kegerators as well.

After reading a couple of other accounts and DIY instructions online, I purchased a single draft tower on eBay. There are a lot of options out there ranging from a plain chrome single faucet from about $60 to gorgeous multi-tap towers for several hundred dollars. I opted for the economical single faucet model as an entry level solution. Once I had the tower in hand is was a simple matter of getting up the guts to drill into the top of my mini-fridge (that took a while since I am quite fond of my fridge as-is).

One of the great things about that model fridge is that it has a built in plastic top which gives it a nice finish as a stand alone unit. It also stands alone a counter height with the added trim.

First task was to remove the plastic top which was held on by a couple of screws in the front near the hinge mounts and four across the back. The plastic top is reinforced with a series of ribs, I removed the ribs in the center square by cutting them out with a utility knife to make room for a block of wood to secure the base of the tower to. There is a circle in the direct center of the underside of the top that I used to drill a pilot hole to mark my starting point for drilling through the top for the beer line.

After cutting a piece of wood to fit the center, I set the cover back in place an it was time for the big drill. I used a hole saw for drilling doorknob holes that had had laying around. It wasn't deep enough to make it through all the materials, so I took it a layer at a time, the wood being the most difficult overall. Once the pilot bit made it to the metal top I was able to move the plastic top out of the way. Once through the metal top, the insulation was a bit messy but cut like butter and then their was only the interior liner which cut pretty smoothly as well.

Time to breath a sigh of relief! Downhill from here. Center the draft tower over the hole and secure it to the wood with 6-8 screws and drop the beer line(s) down into the fride and reattach the top to the fridge.

My draft tower was set up with a hex nut end for a sanke keg (standard commercial kegs). The simplest solution seemed to be to cut the hex end off of the beer line and replace it with a ball lock for a corny keg so I did just that.

Poof, my ordinary minifridge is now a kegerator! Next up, experimentation with the length of the beer line and its impact on the amount of foam...

Cheers,

-D