I've been into homebrew pretty much since i developed a taste for beer and my dad used to brew alot so he showed me how to do it. I've recently moved into my own place with a couple of friends, and we have a laundry and undercover patio area which they don't really use. So I decided to convert this area into a brewery and bar.

The first step was to put down some brews and get some beer going so I did this a few weeks ago.

Then with the help of my dad we built a nice bar bench, it's mainly pine with a jarrah stain and 2-pot esapol finish. It came out pretty well and i'm very happy with it. Just need to make sure kents keep their beers on the bar mats so the finish on the table doesn't get wrecked.

Secondly, I decided that i was fed up with bottling home brew. For those of you who have brewed before it means cleaning out all the bottles, then sterilising them, then priming them, filling them and capping them. If you do a couple of brews at a time it's practically half your day gone. The solution.... KEGS!!!!! So I present to you some photos of my new bar and homebrew setup...


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The Bar



The Bar 2



The beer taps!



The brewery

I currently have two brews fermenting. One is a bitter ale with some extra malt and hops and bits and pieces. The other one is a belgian ale with wheat malt and saaz hops - should be very nice!.



The keg fridge

This holds all the good stuff, the Co2 bottle and regulator, the line goes through a hole i cut in the side of the fridge and filled with expanding foam. It all worked out pretty well in the end



The kegs

Currently two kegs on tap, one is a extra special bitter which is about 7.1% alcohol and has a decent kick to it, very yummy and a nice creamy head. The other one is a pilsner which I haven't tasted yet because I only gassed up the keg today.

There are room for four kegs in the fridge but currently I only have the two that are on tap and some glasses to keep them cool. There is room for bottled beer or more glasses in the vegetable crisper. The freezer currently has ice cubes and some gin and vodka and a few bits and pieces in it.



The pour

Finally, the final result - 38 litres of beer at 5degC on tap any time of the day with the potential for another 38 litres cold for keg changeovers. The beer on the glass is the extra special bitter. In retrospect I think i'll use a secondary or finings to get rid of the cloudyness of the beer, though it could just be because the kegs haven't had time to settle properly.



So anyone else here into homebrew?

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now a certified cordia owner....

What are the expenses for such a setup, what are the ingredients needed to make that liquid.

that_is_gold_

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parts needed: malpassi rising rate reg and lotsa work/time
605X405X78 intercooler
D3B4ST8 is almost done

we have a similar setup in our rental

Under our stairs is the brewery, there is a Hot water service which keeps the room a constant 24 deg all year long

Built a nice bar out of redgum, with an inbuilt fridge............ but the fridge just stoped working a few weeks ago

How much does the gas cost, we ues the carbo drops and bottel the beer

there aint much expenses for a HB setup
$70 will get you the coopers kit and 30L of beer...... thats paid for itself allready,
then its about $10-$15 for each 30L after that

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2003 Alfa 147

thanks for the comments ppl

the 10kg gas bottle works out to be $120 a year hire plus $35 for every refill. The dude at the brewshop reckons i'll be lucky to go through more than 1 bottle a year.

If anyone is interested PM me and I can give you the contact details of the guy in melbourne I purchased all the equipment from. You need:

19 litre kegs $60 each reconditioned
Regulator $90
1 x gas disconnect and 1 x beverage disconnect ($10 each, you need a pair of disconnects for every keg you want to have on tap at the same time)
Tap (you can get the $5 el-cheapo party tap which is a crappy plastic thing, the taps on my bar were $60 each including the shank and handle)
Beer/Gas line (about $2/meter)
hose clamps ($3 each for every fitting)
t pieces ($7 each, if you want to run more than one keg at a time you need to T the gas)
second hand fridge (I paid $170 with warranty but I'm sure you can get something cheaper than that if you try hard enough)

It's a pretty simple concept, basically gas line goes into keg, beer comes out and goes into tap.

Everything to brew the beer is just the usual stuff you use for bottled homebrew. You should be able to get a starter kit for $70 or so. The coopers beer is good to start with but make sure you use glucose in the inital brew NOT normal sugar like the packet suggests. Also with kegging it can help to transfer the wash after it's finished fermenting into a secondary fermenter and leave it for a couple of weeks, this lets the beer age a bit which would normally happen if you bottled it and it also lets the beer clear a bit more so it's less cloudy.

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now a certified cordia owner....

When I brewed beer and lived iin the blue moutains, during winter I put a blanket around the fermenter and used a fish tank heater inside the fermenter, worked great.
If you get the beer sussed and your cordia dosn't need any thing doing to it (unlikely but possible) you could always try this:

http://homedistiller.org/

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'85 AB, Stroked 4G63 SOHC(8v), FMIC, BOV, TN fronts.
------Striped for parts in 2009------

mate have a queit one while working on the yellow buz box


whats the going rate for a pot at he happypig inn ?

haha, that's the one. yellow needs a bit of work done to it at present, i've been neglecting it since I got my other cordia on the road.

going rate? at the moment it's all on the house, though i might have to start taking donations to help pay for the ingredients. Unfortunantly the first couple of brews have been polished off quicker than i expected and I had a brew get infected. Sadly this means it will be about a week until I have beer ready so it's commercial stuff or bottled homebrew for a few days. I'll be making sure i have plenty of beer ready in the future so it won't happen again! Once i'm back in business any cordia owner in melbourne is welcome to come by for a chat/ale!!

incidently.... Ales are best brewed between 18-20degC so melbourne is perfect for ales at the moment. Lagers should be brewed between 10-12degC so you can take advantage of colder climates provided you have true lager yeasts (most of the lager kits such as coopers lager actually use an ale yeast).

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now a certified cordia owner....

mmm looks good.
i feel like a beer now

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2009 Black Xr8 Ute. Boss 290
2001 TM Racing 250EN 2T, HGS, Ohlins, brembos etc
1985 AB GSR. VR-4, LSD, Wolf, 188KW at the wheels FTW!
1984 AB GSR all in bits.
1982 JA Starion
1973 Yamaha RD 250 project cafe racer

mate drop us a pm when ya got ya next brew ready

MerlinTheHapyPig you have just become my home brew hero.

I have a micro brewery sitting in the kitchen and i have just bottled my first batch, which i am really keen 2 sample lol.

Even after bottling just one batch, i can really see ur point on the whole keg issue. bottles are a pain in the arse, they can explode, and seriously who has enough empties lying around 2 bottle 23 liters of beer at a time! I want 2 start my next brew but i can't till i get more freekin bottles.

How much did the keg setup cost you, and is it easy 2 maintain? cause after i get my brewing skills up 2 scratch i realy think the keg path is the way 2 go.

with your own icy cold beer on tap at home, you'll never get ur mates 2 f*ck off!

Regards: Chariot.

thanks for all the comments. I actually still bottle the occasional brew because some of the beer I make is a specific style that needs to be bottled

I've been brewing in bottles for years and there are many many advantages i've found with using kegs:
-don't need to collect, clean, sanitise, prime, fill, cap bottles
-quicker turnaround time - after it finishes fermenting simply chill the keg and gas it up it's drinkable straight away but it will improve as the carbonation settles down. No need to wait 2-3 weeks for bottles to carbonate.
-better control of carbonation - you decide how fizzy you want the beer, how fast it pours and how much head. I've bottled a few batches where i overprimed or underprimed the bottles result was beer was flat/too fizzy. With kegs you set the pressure with the regulator
-it's convenient - just refill the glass, don't need to worry about empty bottles, bottle caps etc. and good for people who can't be bothered opening the fridge door to get a drink like "normal" people do.
-beer tastes at least as good as bottled (if not better) - the keg doesn't effect the flavour of the beer at all
-it's cool! - cmon who doesn't want their own beer tap!

I've bottled my beer for years until now and since I've got this setup working i will never go back! it's just so convenient and makes making beer less of a chore and more fun.

anyway regarding costs read up a few posts and i mentioned all of the equipment you'll need and the costs. Very easy to maintain the kegs are easy to clean and the posts can be dissassembled. They have rubber seals in them which will eventually need replacing but I think you can buy seal kits somewhere and they are fairly cheap. The best way to clean the lines and taps is to fill a keg with sanitiser and hook it up which you can use to flush the lines. The taps also dissassemble.

Most people mount the keg taps in the door of the fridge but since I had the bar i wanted to build a bar font. since I took the pictures I have had to move the fridge outside because the lines were too long and it was causing the beer to pour too slowly and the beer was warming up in the lines.

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now a certified cordia owner....

That's awesome. Have been thinking about doing a bit of home brew but didn't want to dick around with the bottles... and kegs are cool.

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[size=75]Ich will die Ruhe stören

Bones heal, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.

fudge, you champion.

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~8v 4G63 AC GSR
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~1999 Honda VFR800

nice bar there, a mate of mine had a "pub" set up in a double garage. it was a great set up, pool table aswell. another guy i know makes spirits, i got some rockin 80 proof vodka off him, i wouldn't mind getting into that, he also made sambooka and some other stuff

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Cordias grumble louder than a fat mans belly at the back of a McDonalds que

i know this topic is a bit old but i have the same setup bar the fact that there are two taps on the front of my fridge, i am well happy with the results. the hoegaarten im brewing is a dead ringer for the more (way more) expensive real thing. cant go wrong with kegging your own beers.

if i can be bothered i'll get some pics, but like i said it looks to be an old thread

oh forgot to add, i've been distilling my own spirits for a while now too if your a chef and an alcaholic like me its the best way to go. vodka galore.

if anyone else distills drop me a pm cos im lookin for new ideas rather than just distilling a water/glucose wash

spirits be more my style. How you set that up?

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parts needed: malpassi rising rate reg and lotsa work/time
605X405X78 intercooler
D3B4ST8 is almost done

nice to hear someone else is into brewing. Liquor prices are up heaps now, makes me glad that I can do it myself for cheap!

to do spirits you need to get a still; it's actually illegal but you can own a 5 litre still I think, just say you're using it for essential oils because that's one of the legal uses of a still!!!

I have a 2 litre still lying around but it's too much of a pain in the butt to use and not big enough volume to be worthwhile. If you want to do spirits 20litre still is the go just don't get busted.

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now a certified cordia owner....

I think i should google the method of it aye?

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parts needed: malpassi rising rate reg and lotsa work/time
605X405X78 intercooler
D3B4ST8 is almost done

http://homedistiller.org/

saved you the trouble!!

i'm too lazy to make spirits. see you still need to ferment to get the wash before you start distilling, so you basically have to do everything you do when making beer, and then go further and distill!!

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now a certified cordia owner....