Recently at Cheeky Peak Brewery we constructed an 8 tap Keezer. We built the Keezer to enable us to pour samples of our fresh wort kits with the idea being that customers can “try before they buy”. The Keezer sitting front and centre on the Cheeky Peak Brewery showroom floor will also give customers a firsthand visual on how they can build their very own Keezer at home.

However, for those of you who are not local to Cheeky Peak Brewery, this blog post is for you!

This post is a full outline of all the parts we used to construct the Cheeky Peak Brewery 8 Tap Keezer.

KEEZER UNIT DESIGN

For our build we decided to go for the keezer collar design. Two main reasons for this choice:

1.    Allowed us to not have to directly cut into the freezer unit

2.    It gave our freezer size additional height to allow us to fit in additional kegs.

The timber listed below in the parts section was used for our collar (cut to size) and will sit around the top of the freezer. To complete this, you must first remove the freezer lid and reattached freezer to the top of your collar (see pics below)

 Parts List – Keezer Unit / Collar

• Chest Freezer 990mm in length, 630mm depth $160. This freezer suits 8 kegs, however we decided to house 7 + a 2.6kg gas bottle
• Timber 4 X 1200 Length $100 (Bunnings) 20mm thick and 300mm wide
• 12 X 12g 50mm long wood screws with hex head (Bunnings). Used to secure the joins of the timber collar
• 1 X Drill bit. Used for pilot hole prior to using wood screws.
• 1 X Tube of Liquid Nails (Bunning). We used liquid nails on each of the timber joins and to secure the Keezer timber collar to top of the freezer unit.
• Glue Gun
• Small Paint Roller. Used to apply the chalk paint to the entire white sections of the freezer.
• Chalk Paint (Bunnings). We decided to paint the entire freezer including the lid with paint so we can display and update our tap list easily.
• Used fridge crisper as our for paint tray (taken from our second hand fermenter fridge)
• 22mm Hole Saw.

This Hole Saw was used to drill out 8 X 22mm holes through the timber collar for the taps. We also drilled 1 x 22mm hole at the rear of the Keezer to fit a Thermowell.

• 5 X 75mm SS bolts. Used to bolt freezer lid to the timber collar.
• 5 X SS washers to suit bolts
• 5 X Nylox SS nuts for bolts

KEEZER LIQUID SIDE

For our liquid side setup, we decided to display our full range of taps on the Keezer to give our customers a firsthand look at their design and use. However, for your own keezer build you could just use one style of tap.

Parts List – Liquid Side (Including Kegs):

• 5 X 80mm SS 304 Shanks with elbow barb $19 each shank $95 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X Ultra Tap $41 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X Perlick 630SS $74.50 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X Perlick 650SS FG $99 (Cheeky Peak Brewery
• 1 X Intertap SS $32 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X Intertap SS FC $44 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 3 X STD Tap & 90mm long shank & tap – Special 2 for $47 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 8 X Plastic straight taps handles $15.60 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 16 X Line Crimps 8-9mm for securing beer line to taps disconnects $8 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 8 X 3m length of 5mm ID and 8mm OD beer line $40.80 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 8 X Barbed liquid Ball Lock disconnects $3.5 each $28.  (Cheeky Peak Brewery) Used to connect to beer out on keg to enable beer to run through the lines to the beer tap.
• 7 X Used and fully refurbished 19L Ball lock kegs $65 each (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X 5l mini kegs. We will aim to use this keg for wort experiments i.e vanilla porter or fruit beers etc $54 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X 5l Mini keg head, ball lock $32 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 3 x Wall Mounted Drip Trays $39.95 each $119.85 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)

KEEZER GAS SIDE 

We decided with the gas side of the keezer to install two sets of manifolds. One bay of manifolds for carbonation and one bay of manifolds for serving. This allows the unit to become extremely flexible and won’t restrict the user from carbonating and serving at the same time.

Parts List – Gas Side:

• 1 X 6kg Gas Bottle $90 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 2 X Harris 601 CO2 Regulators $180.  (Cheeky Peak Brewery) We would always like to play it safe and use the best quality regulators on pressure vessels. For our Keezer we decided to join 2 regs together (one for carbonation and one for dispensing)
• 1 X Harris 601 Regulator joining adaptor $12.40 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X 2 Way Gas Manifold $14.  (Cheeky Peak Brewery) Used to run gas at pour pressure for 2 kegs
• 1 X 6 Way Gas Manifold $42 (Cheeky Peak Brewery). Used to run gas to 6 kegs at pouring pressure
• 1 X 4 Way Gas Manifold $24.50 (Cheeky Peak Brewery). Used to run gas to 4 kegs at carbonating pressure.  We will put 4 X liquid disconnects with barb on this manifold to carbonate through the liquid post.
• 15 X 20mm Small wood screws to secure CO2 manifolds, Ink Bird Controller and Wall Mounted Drip Trays to Keezer
• 8 X Gas Barbed Ball Lock Disconnect $3.50 each $28 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 4 X Liquid Barbed Ball Lock Disconnects $3.50 each $14 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 16m of Gas Line 5mm ID and 8mm OD $1.70 per m so $27.20 total (Cheeky Peak Brewery). 1m per outlet on the 3 CO2 manifolds.  3m to run gas to pouring manifolds as we will need to split line to run gas to the 2 Way and the 6 way manifolds for pouring pressure gas lines. 1m to run gas from regulator 2 to 4 way carbonating manifold.
• 32 X Crimps 6-9mm $16 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X SS 304 T Gas line splitter $2.95 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)

Temperature Control – Parts List

• 1 X SS 304 Thermowell $17.50 (Cheeky Peak Brewery)
• 1 X Ink Bird 308T temp controller used to control temperature of the freezer to the desired serving temperature.