Designing basement bar - NEED 2/WANT 3 beers on tap.

[ajaeger]

We have out basement bar framed out and roughed-in, but decided at the 11th hour to add in draft beer. That's giving me headaches and I wanted to run a few things by you all.

1. Second house, so we're not there all the time to drink beer. Therefore, beer will sit in the lines from weekend to weekend.
2. Ideal spot for the cooler is under the stairs. That's atleast 15' away from where the taps would be.
3. In the bar, we might be able to rearrange things to get a 24" kegerator under the counter.
4. We want to be able to accomodate 2 home brew kegs and ideally one slim 1/6 or 1/4 of something commercial (ie Sam Adams)

My preference would be to keep the bar layout as is and have the cooler 15' away, if that's possible. What would be required for that?

If that's too much hassle, the undercounter/built-in kegerator would work, provided it can hold the 2-3 kegs and CO2. Any suggestions on brands?

Thanks. Anna

[yaw]

I'm certainly not the right person to speak to the logistics of a 15 foot run but wanted to pass along my experience in completing my own basement bar. I got a wild idea of putting a freezer in the guest bedroom closet and running 4 to 6 taps on the other side of the wall for our bar. While I was hard pressed to find anyone with a good reason not to have that many beers on tap, I began to realize that it might not be necessary and that I would typically lean towards a couple of favorites anyway. I decided on a Haier that measured 23.5 by 23.5, avail in black and stainless and a very modest upgrade price to dual tap. I did not mount mine under the counter, however my neighbor has the same model and has had it under counter for just over a year w/o problems. I have no problem getting 2 1/6s in it and I'm actually curious if I could get 2 1/4 slims in it. CO2 fits inside on a shelf so you don't need to account for extra space for it either.

Good luck and enjoy the building process!

[Jay1]

I have built my basement bar, have 3 products on tap. I have 30ft of line.
I am using glycol to cool it through some "trunk line". The life of a keg is about 3months. 30L (7.75g) to a small keg. Thats 61 pints.

61 x 3 = 180 = 2pints/day assuming 90days. If I am not using my tower daily I typically dump about 3/4th of a pint that is sitting in my lines as it gets a bit stale. Cleanlyness (not spoken about enough) is absolutely necessary so each time I change a keg I clean the beer line which takes about 3/4 of an hour as I soak the taps in the cleaning soluton and then give them a good scrub. So if this is your second house I you need to keep maint in mind.

[mattnad]

I have built my basement bar, have 3 products on tap.

Like that Sleeman. Drank a lot of it when I lived in Toronto.

[ripcurl2151]

One of these days I'll get around to doing a write up on my kegerator, but just so you know it is possible to fit 2 1/6 kegs and a slim 1/4 keg (plus a 5lb CO2 tank) in a 7.2 CF Kenmore chest freezer if you can work that into your bar. You'll just need to use a 2x6 collar on the top if you want to fit it all in there.