Truly great ideas all provoke the same reaction: “Oh my God, that’s perfect. Why didn’t I think of that?” This is one of those ideas.
UPDATE! We’re now selling a DIY portable kegerator kit.
My neighbor is a beer distributor. So he’s around professional-grade hardware every day. He knows what it takes to serve beer. But until recently he had a choice. He could serve you at his house, which has a really nice setup. Or he could use exactly the same tub-of-ice-and-a-rented-tap you see at every frat party in the country.
That all changed in May, when he decided to go mobile.
He showed up down at the beach club with this contraption and started serving from it. Of course every guy there had to get a look under the hood.
It was like someone just brought home a new Hemi, and all the neighbors standing around oohing and aahing.
But of course you only look under the hood for so long. Then you have to fire it up and see how it runs.
Oh yeah. That’s some fine American craftsmanship there.
So, what should he call it? The Keginator? Porta-keg? Keg Can? Please leave your suggestions below.
PS: If you’d like one of these, let me know in the comments below. I’m trying to talk my neighbor into offering a kit.
UPDATE! We’re now selling a DIY portable kegerator kit.
41 Comments
How about Tap-N-Travel? Or The KegMobile?
Ingenious? Definitely. But methinks someone takes their brew at tad too seriously.
Ali
That is wicked bad ass. I say call it the "Brew Barrel" or "Rollin' Foamy".
Ali: I have to disagree, I think that amount of seriousness is awesome.
Your neighbor is a woodchuck in training. The question, of course, is what KIND of beer does he put in there? Anything fancier than Bud and he can't be a woodchuck.
Carol, that's good. Maybe Tap-N-Go.
Ali & Bob, I'm with Bob on this one. That is an appropriate amount of seriousness.
Kristin, this is woodchuck. Especially if you use parts salvaged from when you put in the new deep sink.
Ali – It is not possible to take beer too seriously.
That is probably the second coolest way to serve alchohol I have ever seen. The first is that drunken watermelon.
Tori, no no no no … The watermelon is not for beer. It's for liquor. Who wants watermelon flavored beer?
I have everything to make that watermelon. Except the watermelon. And, at the moment, a husband to do it for me.
Kristin, just for you: Woodchuck water heater. And woodchuck engineering.
Oh my word my husband would have to have one of these, I'm not showing him the picture!! LOL!!
Call it the 'Get Trashed Can'
How about the "Keg-A-Haulic"?
Now I need to make one.
Wow – That's pretty cool! The name "BrewMobile-1" comes to mind. I bet the guy in this video could have used something like that! He was doing in the hard way: http://thepubshow.net/2009/TPSTheKeg.asp
Ingenious. The lengths that folks go to to have frosty cold beer close at hand is boggling. And commendable!
Husband's first response, "I want one!" Second one, "I'll buy a kit!"
How about the Trashed Can?
Oh as soon as I posted that I saw the earlier "Get Trashed Can" idea – I guess I'm not original after all.
A more expensive version here
http://www.pedalpub.com/
Get your exercise, too!
Hey! They have those in Amsterdam. I saw one when I was there a couple of years ago.
Ali
Aw, that post needed to come a week or two before Father's Day – what a gift for the He-Man!!
Of course, I can always give it to him for a Christmas present!!
Portable panty remover
That is freaking sweet!
Except for the storage bulk, this is good. It's a Jockey Box with wheels. The improvement comes from the size allowing everything to go together.
I put on a few beer fest fund raisers, and this may be just what the doctor ordered. I may make a few of these and see how the beer vendors like it.
Sounds like you've done your own builds before. But if you're interested we're selling a kit online now.
Someone asked what kinda beer that was? I think it's Pilsner (SP?)form the look of the tap art but I could easily be mistaken.
Anon, if he made sure to match the tap art to what was in the keg … that would be taking it too seriously.
One man's trash is another man's treasure
Heh, that's a good one, Tommy.
Beer-Bin!
Isolate it more and come with another solution than using normal ice, take care of how the thing looks (trash can isn't very… euhm, tasteful…) and then you might have made a nice item. Too bad you were so stupid to post it all over the internet instead of taking a patent on the finished product.
Wow, CW, thanks for that constructive criticism.
Gosh, you're right, this doesn't look very tasteful, and goodness knows that people drinking beer in parks and tailgate parties are always concerted with appearances.
And what were we thinking using just plain old ice. Why, all we'd need to do is install a compressor and refrigerate the whole thing. (Of course then we'd need better insulation … and a power source. Minor details.) Unless you were suggesting dry ice instead. Yeah, that could work. And it only takes special handling to work, and we'd have to seal the container so it doesn't all sublimate as soon as warm air hits it.
And yes, once that's all done, we'd have something we could patent. Maybe even call it a Kegerator.
Except that already exists.
You see, we did think about it. And we saw plenty of high-end, "tasteful" ways to keep beer cold. The whole point of this one is that it's simple, durable, and cheap. And we discussed the patent issue with an attorney, who said it wasn't sufficiently unique to warrant it.
But hey, if you prefer to think we're being stupid … thanks for the feedback.
It wasn't meant like that… Didn't mean to mock you or anything like that.
And there are many other possibilities btw… reusable ice packs, just to give an example.
More insulation seems like a good idea to me anyway, also (or even certainly) without turning it into a refrigerator. When you make it white it will already take less heat from the sun. (The sun can even help you btw. The solar panels that are used today will not do very much, but there are other things too, when you take a look at existing refrigerating techniques…)
Nice to see that you did think about getting a patent.
Reading my previous reaction again, I see why you took it the wrong way. Keeping it to the essence and being very concise clearly makes the message turn into a rude message for the reader. I'm sorry for this.
How about "The Pumpster"?
Ooh, that's a good one.
A side note about alternative cooling methods:
Yes, ice is messy and lasts a short time. But there are worse things: my engineering buddies once over-chilled a keg with dry ice, and we wound up with beer-sicles. Better was the guy with the keg backpack.
Perhaps covering the exterior of the bin with some kind of linen would help insulate (instead of, or in addition to, the earlier suggested painting it white).
Linen would absorb the condense, which removes thermal energy during evaporation. It's a practice commonly used on canteens as well and dunking them in water would cool the contents.
Unless, of course, the beer stays cold in the bin for a whole day's worth of serving…
PS – Awesome idea! Thumbs up!
Martijn, I'm sure that would work, but this thing is all about simplicity. Besides which, maybe in Arizona you'll need the extra cooling, but here in Cleveland we still have ice in the bottom at the end of the day.
Very nice! All you need to do now is incorporate some sort of cooling coils into the system, like a Jockey Box uses, so the beer is properly chilled on it's way out. Icing an entire keg is overkill when a coil works so well for cooling. (I'm a fan of overkill, but also a fan of efficiency… and if a keg is a little warm when you put it in the tank, it takes a long time for ice to cool it from the outside, whereas it doesn't matter if it's cooled in the line!)
Anon, once you start doing the coils you might as well simply get a jockey box. It would be smaller than this setup.
They two systems are solving different problems, though. A jockey box is good for when the keg might not already be cold. You can keep loading ice and keep swapping out the keg(s) attached to it. It's great for when you're going to be serving more than one keg at an event.
The downside is it takes a lot of pressure to push the beer through all that tubing. A single 5-pound CO2 tank with the Kegmobile should last for 10-15 full size (half-barrel) kegs.
If you're serving beer at a football game, you expect to go through multiple kegs, and you have someplace to get more ice throughout the day, get a jockey box. If you only plan on serving one keg, it's already cold, and you need to get it from the car to the picnic table, get the Kegmobile.
How about “chills on wheels”?