Here’s a look at my party tap set up that I built out of a few old parts and some new ones.
I have had this little 5 gallon round cooler since I was a sophomore in college. I used it mainly for float trips or yard drinking and usually filled it with some sort of gin-based lemon-lime concoction. But I digress. Here’s some pictures in it’s new life!
I use the jockey box in conjunction with two velcro-laden Reflectix wraps I made. They wrap each keg thre times and velcro onto themselves. What is really nice about the wraps is that I can take a keg out of the keezer, wrap it and it stays under 40F for 20-24 hours. If it’s going to be longer than that out of refrigeration, I usually scoot the wraps up and put the kegs in a cooler with ice as shown at my mom’s surprise birthday party:
The inside is packed full with the cold plate, beer lines and shanks. Seen here right after drilling holes in the ol’ gin bucket.
With ice and beer:
The beer line is all 1/4" ID, with 10’ coiled up inside the cooler for each tap run. The lines from the cooler to the kegs are each 5’ long. This is most likely overkill, but go big or go home yeah?
The system works really well in terms of keeping the beer cold and not having any foaming. It’s been a hit at several parties over the summer in it’s short lifespan as a jockey box. In the future, I plan to either vinyl wrap it in white with my brewery logo on it or something similar.
I started thinking about that, but after buying the shanks/faucets from a local friend and the cold plate for cheap off of eBay, it was less than the cost of a 3G corny! 8)
Oh I hear ya! Our older club jockey box is a 5-tapper with no labeling. It’s such a PITA to set up each time. When I built the club’s new jockey box, I labeled everything with numbers.
Now a featured Pimp My System! Knowing the cooler’s former life as a gin-holding, party-starting hangover-machine… it’s a bit odd that some people take it seriously. :o Hahaha.
My college friends sure are getting a kick out of this though! ;D
Much lower pH will leach copper into the beer which is not good for the beer drinker. one could I suppose use stainless coils if one was inclined to spend the money.
Coils are light, which is nice. It makes the jockey box easier to carry and the coils cool down fast. Downfall is the must be covered in ice so you might need a lot more ice. The plate in our club’s jockey box sits flat on the bottom so it just needs a layer of ice over it. It also weights ~25lbs.
