Looking into building a keeper sometime soon. I am hoping for a 4 corny keg setup with room in the keezer for a 10lb CO2 tank. A bonus would be extra room to lager a primary 6 gallon carboy possibly at the expense of one or two kegs at times. Any recs on size/model/brand of freezer to look into?
A 7.2 cu ft chest freezer will fit 4 cornies and probably the co2 tank on the hump ( I have a 5lb tank so I don’t know about the 10 lb one ).
If you want room for a carboy as well, I’d say go with a 14 cu ft chest freezer. Should be plenty of room. I know there are some 9 cu ft ones too. Homebrewtalk has a thread on their forum regarding sizing your chest freezer. They suggest making cardboard circles of the kegs ( and carboy in your case ), taking them to the store, and placing them in the chest freezer to see how they will fit.
My chest freezer is a GE, and it is running great so far.
I have a 15.4 cu ft chest freezer, and my options are 2x 3gal cornies on the hump plus;
a) 8x 1/6 barrel / cornies
b) 4x 1/6 barrel + 1x 1/2 barrel
c) 2x 1/6 barrel + 2x 1/2 barrel
I’d say a 6.5gal carboy or a bucket will take up a footprint not much smaller than a 1/2 barrel. If you lager in a keg (albeit that’s 5 gallons) you use less space, and then you can just carb it afterwards.
An excellent point. To lager in a corny do you need a special adapter to allow the co2 to escape from the corny? I’ll be new to kegging
You can lager under pressure so no need for the CO2 to escape. My usual SOP for lagers is after the primary fermentation and D-rest, if necessary, cold crash the beer for a few days in the carboy and then rack into the keg. Then I carb it up and let it lager.