The keezer is largely finished, at least until Chelsea and I fill it up with more home-made beer. It has been a ton of work, and definitely had lots of trial and error, but it is certainly an upgrade from the old one, which was truly butt ugly.
I’ll start with the dual-hinge design. After looking at some other designs, I knew I wanted to use the stock freezer hinges to hinge up the whole collar, so that the cables were out of the way when I needed to swap out kegs. Therefore, I needed an extra set of hinges to hinge up the actual lid. However, trying to find hinges that would fit onto the freezer lid was challenging, so instead I purchased a second set of hinges and covers direct from Danby, the freezer manufacture.
Using actual freezer hinges, rather than some make shift door hinge was a good idea. Even though the second set of hinges, covers, and shipping set me back $80, it was money well spent and works really well.
Moving on to the fan. A fan is needed to keep the temperature consistent throughout the keezer. Without a fan, it can cause foaming because the beer tubing will be warmer than the beer at the bottom of the keezer. The fan for my design will plug in to the temperature controller and only come on when the freezer is running.
Acquiring the correct fan turned out to be a pain in the ass. By the third fan, I got it right though. The first fan I purchased was a 120 V, 20 Watt fan designed for pushing air through duct. I installed that and it was insanely loud. I first mounted it directly to the wood and Chelsea and I determined that it was using the collar like a guitar’s sound board, pushing air through the back opening. I think it reverberated the whole house. Trying to fix it, I installed some foam underneath the fan to try to stop the reverberations, but it was still too loud for our kitchen. Return!
The second fan was a small USB fan designed for a computer desktop. It was quiet, which solved my first problem. However, it didn’t mount well and it required a finger push to turn it on everytime there was a power cycle. Considering the temp controller cycles on and off regularly, this was clearly not going to work.
The third fan learned from my first two mistakes. It mounted easily, has a latching power button, and it is whisper quiet. I plugged it into the temperature controller and it has been running for a week. No problems!
I purchased dehumidifier that renews itself by being plugged into the wall. Cool design. It can be placed anywhere in the keezer. This is done so that moisture and ice does not build up in the keezer.
I wanted to route the tubing on the back collar, so that when the collar hinged up, most of the cables will go up and back, allowing easy access to swap in and out kegs.
For route on the back collar wall, I first thought that some tie wraps and a stapler may work, which was by far my most pathetic attempt during my keezer build. Deciding to do it right, I purchased a Rack Mount Cable Management Device. This item worked well! Happy I could find something for only $14. It also came with some velcro ties, which I used to route the beer lines around the left side.
I’m happy with my build, how it’s working and how it looks. It has certainly been a time commitment, and not overly cheap either, but I’m happy with the end result. Once it’s filled with beer, I’ll post a picture of all the C02 and beer lines happily running to their kegs.
