How to Build Your Own Kegerator

This page is a step-by step guide showing how my friend Andy and I build my kegerator.  I am quite pleased with how it turned out.  It is such a kick having fresh home-brewed beer on tap, and it beats the heck out of bottling and waiting for the beer to condition.

I found building my kegerator to be fun, rewarding, and a slight cost savings over buying one.  I could also customize the size and number of taps.   Hopefully you will find this guide helpful if you decide to build one.

1.) Picking the Right Fridge

I looked all over the internet to try to find the best mini-fridge to convert to a kegerator.  I heard some horror stories about some guys who drilled through the top of their fridge and hit a refrigerant line and totally ruined it.  I finally settled on the Danby DAR440BL.  It was just the right size to hold 2 corny kegs and a 5 lb CO2 bottle with regulator.  Also, by all accounts it doesn’t have any refrigerant lines running over the top.  I had to order this fridge on the internet from Wal-Mart because it wasn’t sold in my state.  That was easy enough, because I had them deliver it to my local Wal-Mart for free and I picked it up.

If this fridge is no longer on the market or you’d rather use another one, you certainly can.  Just make sure it has removable shelves and enough room to store the number of corny kegs you want to hold.  I had to take the plastic molding and shelving off the door of the Danby in order to fit the two kegs.  If you use another fridge I recommend calling the company to make sure the area you are planning on drilling through is free from cables and lines.  Also, use the heat test that I will show later.

2.) Ordering Your Keg Equipment

In addition to the fridge there are several other items you will need to build your kegerator.  These include:

1. Corney kegs
2. Co2 bottle
3. Regulator
4. Keg tower
5. Keg lines
6. Drip Tray

I purchased two conry kegs, lines, the C02 bottle and regulator from Midwest Supplies as a set.  The kegs were used but in good condition and it came with a nice C02 regulator for each keg and one to tell me when the bottle was low.  Here is the link to this kit.

Drip trays are way too expensive for the purpose they serve (in my opinion).  I looked all over the place and found one that was fairly cheap.  It was from an E-bay store called Kegworks.  Here is the link.  The problem with this drip tray is that it has a drain (I didn’t realize this when I bought it).  I fixed this by using strong tape (duct tape or aluminum tape) to cove the drain hole on this inside of the tray.  I then placed 4 furniture feet (small plastic feet with sticky backs) on the bottom of the drip tray to hold it level higher than the drain outlet.  This worked well.

I ended up also buying the 14 7/8″ metal grate because I hatted the plastic look (just my preference).

I purchased the keg tower from Beverage Factory.  It was the D4743DT 3″ Chrome Plated Metal Dual Faucet Draft Beer Tower.  $92 was the cheapest I could find for this part.  Here is the link.

I also had to purchase a piece of Plexiglas (30″x36″) and some screws to mount the tower from Home Depot and a plastic cutting board.

3.) Drilling the Hole in the Top of the Fridge

This is the most nerve-racking part of this project.  Even though I had read that this fridge was OK, I was still very reluctant to do this.  The Danby fridge does have a line running over the top but it is at the front.  We are drilling at the back.  I can assure you it is OK for this Danby fridge if you follow these steps.

If you want to be extra sure you’re OK (or if you are using a different fridge) there is a way to identify any refrigerant lines on the top of the fridge.   First, plug the fridge in and turn the thermostat to full cold.  Let it do its thing for about an hour so that the refrigerant lines get really hot.  Then mix up a batch of corn starch and rubbing alcohol into a paste and smear it onto the top of the fridge.  You want it to be about the consistency of glue or paste.  The area above the refrigerant line will dry first because of the heat.

Remove all the shelving from inside the fridge.  Then I put some crate paper on the top of the fridge and taped it down securely.  We then traced out the obstacles on the inside of the fridge on this crate paper.  This required a lot of measuring.

It was important to outline the sensor, light and cord that are mounted to the ceiling of the inside of the fridge.  You can see the trace below.  I also traced out the 2 1/8″ hole that I will drill through the fridge.  I centered this hole between the coils mounted to the back of the fridge and the sensor unit.

I then carefully cut through the crate paper and the metal of the fridge using a 2 1/8″ hole saw (drill bit attachment).  As soon as I made it through the metal I stopped to make sure there were no wires in the way.

I then slowly cut through the rest of the insulation and through the plastic on the inside of the fridge.  The next step is sealing the exposed insulation so it doesn’t get wet and deteriorate.  My friend Andy happened to have some industrial insulation sealant so I used that.  This is expensive so if you don’t happen to have “RedGard” lying around you can skip this step.

After I let the RedGard dry, I sealed over this some aluminum tape.  Don’t skip this step because you need to keep moisture out of the insulation.

Here’s the whole from inside.

4.) The Rigid Support and Mounting the Tower

Then I used a permanent marker to trace the pattern from the crate paper on the plastic cutting board.  This cutting board will be used to mount the keg tower to and will go on the inside of the fridge.  This will make the keg tower more rigid than if it was just bolted to the plastic fridge.  You could use a different material than the cutting board if you want but it needs to be rigid, waterproof, and as cheap as possible.  This was the best thing I could find.  Don’t use wood or it will rot because of the humidity in the fridge.

Then Andy and I used a table saw to cut the cutting board and we used the drill bit to cut the hole.  Andy adjusted the height of the blade on the table saw to cut a groove in the board where the cord for the sensor runs.

Andy using his new table saw.

We then placed the keg tower on top of the fridge and drilled the holes for the mounting screws.  BE CAREFUL NOT TO HIT THE SENSOR BOX OR CABLE!

I held up the cutting board to the top of the inside of the fridge while Andy drilled the holes so they would go through the fridge and the cutting board.  Then we mounted the tower to the cutting board using some screws we purchased at Home Depot.  They needed to be a little longer than the ones that came with the keg tower.

5.) The Door

We then pulled back the rubber door seal and unscrewed all the screws that mounted the white plastic molding to the inside of the door.  There were like 30 screws that had to come off to remove this piece.  Once this plastic piece was off I used it to trace it’s outline on the piece of Plexiglas we had purchased from Home Depot.

Then Andy cut out the Plexiglas following the lines we traced using the white plastic molding.  and we drilled holes where all the screws mounted.  Then we placed the Plexiglas where the plastic had been.  The Plexiglas is needed to keep moisture out of the door insulation.  Here is Andy putting all the screws back in.

The Plexiglas was a little thicker than the white plastic molding had been, so the door wouldn’t quite close.  All that was needed was to adjust the door clearance at the hinge so that the door closed evenly.

Here’s the converted kegerator.

Total Cost

Total expenses for the kegerator were broken out as follows (prices include shipping and tax):

Fridge $199.62
Drip Tray $58.79
Metal drip tray cover (not necessary) $42.57
Keg tower $105.74
Corny kegs, regulator, and CO2 tank $225.89
.236 gauge 30″x36″ Plexiglas (too thick) $41
Tape (already had)
Cutting board ~$11
Screws/bolts ~$4
Total $646-$689

Comments and Improvements

I have seen on the internet where some people have built elaborate fans to force cold air up into the tower to keep the keg lines cold.  In theory, it is important to make sure the beer doesn’t warm up too much on its way to the tap or foaming can ensue.  I decided that I would only try to build such a contraption if I found it to be necessary.  I have been using this kegerator for about 7 months now with no foaming problems.  The tower is insulated and the beer spends minimal time in the line.  It comes out of the tap plenty cold.  In short, I wouldn’t waste the time or money worrying about heat gain in the keg lines.

One issue I have noticed to be somewhat of an irritation is that the fridge allows the temperature to fluctuate quite a bit.  There is a dial that allows you to change the minimum temperature in the fridge.  This fridge is quite capable of cooling to below freezing (if you were so inclined), but the built-in thermostat will shut off the compressor and allow the fridge to warm back up to ~45F before it turns back on.  It warms up to 45F regardless of where you position the thermostat dial (only the low temperature changes).  I actually charted the temperature over a couple hours (I know I am such a geek, but I guess that’s why I’m an engineer) and saw this cycle repeated several times.

It may seem like this doesn’t matter, but if you are a nit-picky home brewer (like me) you really need a consistent temperature to control the amount of CO2 dissolved in your beer.  I spend a good bit of time making sure my bottled beer has just the right amount of corn sugar or extract to produce just the desired volumes of CO2 for each of my beers, so I really want to be able to have that control over my kegged beer as well.  I also want to be able to dial in the serving temperature for a specific beer.

In light of this, I do plan to fix this problem in the future.  I will need an external thermostat controller to do this.  These are fairly expensive but you can really dial them in to  within a couple degree range.  Here is the one I’m leaning towards.

One thing to remember if you decide to do this is that this short-circuits your built-in defrost cycle.  This really isn’t a major concern, though, because the door is closed most of the time.  There isn’t a continual influx of moisture.  However if you open the door to the kegerator a lot or live in a very humid area, you might find a lot of ice build up.

If you need a little more help or would like to just watch a video of someone making a kegerator you can watch Chris Knight in the video below.  he uses a different fridge (which I believe is discontinued) but he demonstrates several of the same techniques I used.