A genius beer lover, kegerator engineer, and piano recycler has built one of the most interesting kegerators we’ve ever seen. After getting a busted-up, out-of-tune piano for free, Eric Townsley went to work on making something much more useful. He’s posted a whole album of photos to Google+, including photos of the build and the massive CO2 tank that fuels the whole thing. Click through for more.

The Sparkfun Kegerator

This has been around for a little while, but we felt like it was worth posting again for another Friday how-to article.

The team at SparkFun electronics has written a detailed guide on how to connect your kegerator to a Twitter account, allowing you to broadcast the status of your keg to the world.

When I was first given the duty of making sure the SparkFun kegerator had beer for the SparkFun employees I was excited about getting to choose beer for my colleagues. My excitement quickly waned when I got a knock on my door while in the middle of a panelizing session for BatchPCB. The keg was out. It turns out the SparkFun drinking habits vary and the keg never goes out at a convenient time. People never like going to the break room to grab a cold pint of beer only to get the dreaded fweessssssh of an empty keg. I needed a solution. I wanted something that I could monitor remotely that could tell me when the keg was about to run out.

The most well known method of determining the fullness of a keg is to try to pick it up. If you can pick it up and not feel the mass of the liquid swishing around inside, the keg is out. The more difficult it is to lift the keg, the more full it is. This is just not feasible when it’s carefully wedged inside the keg fridge and is not the most accurate method around, plus it shakes up the beer. Weighing the keg would work well and four 100 pound force sensors would work for weighing the whole kegerator. I replaced the casters on the kegerator with carriage bolts that rest on the force sensors that rest on leftover PCBs that rest on furniture coasters. Hot glue was added to give some support that was needed for the lateral forces of moving the keg in and out of the kegerator.

It unfortunately doesn’t involve an iPad, but it’s certainly a cheaper solution.   And as soon as you get it up and running, be sure to have your keg follow the Lautering account.

Long-time Lautering favorite Make Magazine has an article this month about how to create your own “Jockey Box,” a modified cooler designed to rapidly cool hot wort or beer from a warm keg.

A jockey box is one of those funny coolers with a built-in beer tap on the outside. Inside, it has the requisite plumbing to draw beer from a keg, and a metal coil or cooling plate. Once you fill the cooler with ice and attach a keg, the coil or plate, acting as a heat exchanger, quickly chills the beer to a proper serving temperature — even when the keg itself isn’t cold.

If you’re not already working to build your iPad-controlled kegerator, this seems like a useful, affordable weekend project for any homebrewer or keg-buyer out there.

Max’s Taphouse in Baltimore (BeerinBaltimore.com)

If you’ve ever been to a bar that has dozens of beers on tap, you may have wondered how they store the beer and how they keep everything running.  Well, local beer blog Beer in Baltimore took a trip to Max’s Taphouse in Baltimore to find out.  What they end up with is a really fascinating photo gallery that makes you appreciate just how much work goes into a place like that.

They write:

Ever walk into an impressive beer bar with tons of taps and think to yourself, “Where do they put all of that freakin beer?!”

We’ve heard it many times, especially at places like Max’s Taphouse in Fell’s Point.  And that was before the expansion to over 100 taps!

Max’s draft beer keg system was impressive before, back when it had only 70 beers on tap.  But with the expansion upstairs, came the expansion downstairs.  A new state-of-the-art draft system & cooler that must be seen to be appreciated.

There aren’t just boring photos either — the bar itself has an interactive 360-degree look at their 100-beer cooler, which lets you get a feel for what it’s like to keep everything organized.

For those of us who live in apartments but still badly want their own kegerator at home, our options have been limited.  The only solutions were impractical (try explaining to your landlord why there’s a kegerator in your bedroom) or sort of gross (draft Heineken is still Heineken).

Gravity kegs are relatively easy to find, and the selection is usually pretty good when you find a retailer who sells them.  But up until now, the biggest drawback to the next-best-thing have been that opening one means that you’re stuck with your choice until the 5 liters are gone or until it goes stale.

Not anymore.  The Chambrer claims to work with both pressurized mini-kegs (Heineken or New Castle), or with your standard gravity keg.