A few weeks ago I bought some supplies to upgrade my kegerator from 1 tap to 2 taps. These are the kinds of home improvements I can get behind. I was planning on spending the morning working on our new sidewalk in the backyard, but it rained all night and the ground is a muddy mess. Maybe tomorrow. So instead I finally got to work on my kegerator upgrade.
The kegerator was designed to hold a commercial half-barrel Sankey keg which holds 15.5 gallons. The Cornelius ball-lock kegs I used for my home brew hold 5 gallons each. I can easily fit 2 of them in the kegerator, so it seems like a waste to have a 2 kegs cold in the fridge, but only one of them available on tap. My 5lb CO2 tank and regulator fit in behind the kegs with a little room left over for spare ingredient storage. It works out pretty nice.
Here’s how the kegerator looked this morning:
Note the lovely Koehler Beer tap handle I got off eBay. The tower is a 2.5″ diameter chrome tower with a single faucet. I replaced the original faucet with a Ventmatic faucet a few years ago just as the original Ventmatic company was spiraling into disaster. Google it if you are interested. It’s a really nice faucet. The Ventmatics are a forward sealing faucet which means the faucet seals in the front and that that the mechanism in the faucet stays wet with beer all the time. A traditional faucet which seals at the back of the faucet behind the mechanism. Traditional faucets tend to dry out and stick in the off position unless they are used very regularly and are prone to infections. All that sugary beer just sits there waiting for bacteria to grow and generally gumming up the works. Since the Koehler Brewery isn’t really a bar, we don’t pour beer all that often and the Ventmatics help keep the faucets unstuck and the beer flowing when the bar is open.
So here’s what I bought from Micromatic:
It’s a 3 inch stainless steel draft tower with 2 faucets. I’d already removed the faucets that came with the tower when I took the picture. Most towers are chrome. I hadn’t actually seen American style stainless steel tower before, though I’ve seen some German ones. I think I like the stainless steel better, and it was pretty much the same price. I removed the 2 connectors for commercial Sankey kegs that came with the tower that you can see in the picture. I replaced them with some barbed swivel nuts to connect to the beer line that will attach to the Corny keg quick disconnects I have.
The 3 inch tower is obviously larger than the 2.5 inch tower that came with my kegerator, so I had to drill 4 new holes in the top of the kegerator. The new tower came with a template to use for drilling the holes. Good thing I checked the template against the actual tower before I drilled the holes. They didn’t match up at all. Maybe the template is for some other 3 inch tower Micromatic sell, like the chrome one or something. Anyway, I’m glad I checked. I drilled 4 new holes without much difficultly. I poured some olive oil on the place I was drilling to help the drill bit or stainless steel kegerator top from getting too hot. I’m not sure it was really necessary as the stainless steel sheet metal was pretty thin and pretty easy to drill through, but I have read enough about drilling stainless steel on brewing forums and I figured it couldn’t hurt.
The new tower came with 4 3 inch bolts with washers and nuts to attached it to the top of the kegerator where my old tower had 4 3/4″ wood screws. The kegerator has a wood top under the stainless steel for the wood screws. The 3 inch bolts were not long enough to make in all the way into the inside of the kegerator and I really didn’t want to drill through the insulation and plastic liner if I it wasn’t necessary. So I decided to go with wood screws. The old tower had a decorative ring that covered the screws, so they had rather large pan heads. The new tower left the screws exposed. I was thinking of using the old wood screws but I ended up buying some 3/4″ stainless steel wood screws to attached the tower; they look much better and are flush with the tower’s lip.
I attached my 2 Ventmatic faucets (I bought 2 faucets way back when planning for this day – good thinking too) and my 2 tap handles. The glass lobster claw is from a Red Lobster that closed down in Toronto. I got it on eBay for $3. Who doesn’t love a lobster claw? Apparently most people as $3 is pretty cheap. So here are the results:
Looks pretty good. This is probably my most successful project to date. I usually do something to screw things up, especially if there is something like drilling metal involved.
So with 2 taps you need 2 regulators. I bought this from Micromatic as well:
Pretty swanky. The only problem I had was with the gas lines. They have a 5/16″ interior diameter and All Seasons didn’t have any 5/16″ swivel nuts in stock, only 1/4″. I ordered some from Northern Brewer along with some 8mm replacement spouts for the Ventmatics. I’ll explain that when they arrive; I’ve already talked too long. So for now I can really only dispense beer using the pressure in the kegs. Once that runs down, I’ll have to wait for the swivel nuts to arrive in the mail.
Here’s a parting shot of the interior of the kegerator with 2 kegs hooked up for dispensing. Note the lack of gas lines connected to the kegs. On tap: British Bitter and Milk Stout.
Not much brewing going on at the Koehler Brewery, but there’s plenty of watering hop plants. Three of the original 8 plants have sprouted, 2 Centennials and 1 Newport. I’m glad I got at least one of each of them to grow so that I’ll have some variety available to me for brewing come fall. I’d have been disappointed if I ended up with all the same hops. Here’s what the largest Centennial plant looks like about week after it first broke thorough the soil.
I brought the plants that sprouted to work. It’s easier for me to water them here during my breaks and there’s definitely more sunlight than there is at home. Once they get big enough, I’m going to put some stakes in the ground next to the pots and run some hop twine up the side of an old silo we have at work. The plants should get tons of sun and have lots of room to grow. I guess the only drawback is that I need to keep them in pots so I can remove them at the end of the season. I’ll have to water them and supply them with nutrients regularly, but that just gives me a brewing related activity to keep me busy everyday, so I definitely don’t mind. It’s not like I was going to be able to plant them in the ground at home either. Our backyard is sort of under development at the moment, so it probably won’t be until next summer that things are in order back there. Anyway, a huge thanks to Oman for allowing me to keep my hops at work this summer.
In a more ridiculous development, I got 8 more hop rhizomes; 4 Cascades and 4 Willamettes. I couldn’t pass up some free rhizomes. These rhizomes are much more variable in size than the ones I planted already. There are a number of smaller rhizomes in the bunch. My plan is to plant then 2 to a pot instead of individually. I already have enough pots. Here’s a picture of the Willamettes. I’m trying to do a better job of including pictures on this blog. I always have my cell phone with me, so I’m not sure why I haven’t added more.
The white sprouts are on the right. The instructions that came with my other hops recommended planting the rhizomes horizontally (like they are shown) about 1 inch deep unless you know which side will sprout. If you do, you can plant the rhizome vertically with the sprouts facing up. These rhizomes are already sprouting, so I’m planning on planting them vertically this morning during a break.
Finally, I came across this picture of a hop farm in Germany. Awesome stuff. Oman might not be that happy if I made the office look like this, but it I think I have enough plants to make it happen. Ridiculous.
One of the Centennial plants broke through the soil this weekend. It’s now about an inch tall, so it’s growing pretty quickly. No activity from the other plants. I am a little worried that the plants have been getting too much water and that the roots will rot. There’s been a considerable amount of rain recently. I always empty the trays under the pots after the rain to try to keep the drainage as effective as possible. I thought about bringing the plants inside on days when we are supposed to get rain, but root rot is only a possibility, a baby digging up the roots is guaranteed if the plants are inside.
I also got permission to bring my hops to work. There is an old silo at the office. My plan is to run some hop twine from the pots up to one of the metal bands around the silo. The silo gets great sunlight and should be an excellent place for the hops to grow. Since I am at work all day as well, it’ll be easier for me to tend to them there during breaks.
I ordered some hop rhizomes.
There’s no sensible reason for me to buy hop rhizomes. My backyard is about 25′ by 35′, which is to say, it’s small. I live in a townhouse. We bought the place new and went out of our way to make sure that we had a much green backyard as possible. We put in a parallel parking spot in the alley to conserve green space and park the second car on the street in front of the house. Sometimes I think our yard is too small to be useful and that we should just put in a garage like everyone else. I figure that if we wanted a yard we should have bought a house with a big yard. We certainly had the opportunity. But most of the time I think it’s nice and that we made the right choice. It’s like a little courtyard back there (apart from the fact that there’s basically no grass – thanks builders).
Our neighbor has a giant 2 story garage thing in his backyard. I’m not sure how he gets natural light into his house. Luckily the monster garage doesn’t block the sun from our backyard. Did I mention that it’s 2 stories?
Anyway with our small backyard, we need to make careful decisions about what we want to do with that space.
Buying hop rhizomes just because they are only available in April and pretty cheap isn’t really what we had in mind. Hops may be cheap, but they grow into huge plants. The vines grow 15′-20′ tall. That’s right, 20 feet tall. General practice is to plant individual rhizomes of the same cultivar 3 feet apart and different cultivars 5 feet apart. So you really can’t fit that many plants into my yard.
So I bought 4 Centennial rhizomes and 4 Newport rhizomes. Both are relatively new varieties of high alpha acid American hops. I’m pretty sure I bought the Centennial rhizomes because of the Two-Hearted Ale I drank a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to be made with Centennial exclusively. The only brewery I’ve known to use Newport is Rogue. I figure I bought the Newport because I’ve never seen them for sale at All Seasons. Newer is better right? You’d think that with limited space I’d want to have a bunch of different varieties of hops or at least hops that I have used regularly and liked. Nope. Go for the unknown stuff exclusively and in volume. I’m crazy.
I could fill my whole backyard with those plants. I’m going to need to find a better solution.
There is an old grain silo at work that has a ladder up the side….
