Yes, indeed... turning 21 is truly a magic time. You are finally legal, everything is opened to you, and presenting your ID is like a little bit of magic where you dare people to question its validity with a satisfying, internal "HAH!"

Then it's past and all of a sudden being old enough to drink is just no big deal. You could go and hang out at high schools and offer to buy beer and be the coolest guy to a bunch of teenagers. Driving up in your bitchin' Camaro, sporting a mullet and barely-there moustache that make all the 16 year old girls swoon.

Don't be that guy.

As you get older you appreciate the finer points of alcohol. Lite beer swill ice brewed for flavor sort of loses its ability to impress, and you want to move on to better, tastier, more interesting things. That's when I decided to build my kegerator.

It started out as an addition to my Man World project. I had decided to renovate my basement and part of that project involved a bar. I was able to fit a refrigerator into my bar arrangements an I started out just storing beer in the fridge and candy and beer glasses in the freezer. I had read about converting old fridges to dispense keg beer but couldn't justify getting full kegs of beer.

As an alternative, I had also heard of using old soda canisters to brew beer in. I contacted a friend who brewed in kegs and asked him to show me how to do this. My dad was able to get me a bunch of Pepsi and Coke canisters as well as a CO2 container. The rest of my equipment was ordered from KegWorks.

The home brewing experience did not go as well as I hoped. Bleach in the second ferment ruined the batch so I had to buy a keg from my friend at cost. I don't know if I am going to be able to have the time or discipline to try home brewing, again, but I do have the ability to buy and use regular kegs or home brew kegs.

This is the setup I have now. Drip tray and shank/faucet is from KegWorks... tap handle is from Bad Frog.

Here's a view from the front of the fridge. I decided to tap the side of the fridge, rather than the front, so the freezer would be accessable. Originally, I was going to solve this by using a Mack truck hood ornament as a tap, but it was too top heavy. I drilled the hole for the tap's shank using a 1 inch hole saw. I decided to keep the CO2 tank inside the fridge, rather than keep it outside and have to drill another hole in the fridge. Serving pressure is 10 PSI, although I pumped it up to 20 PSI for a few days to get more head on the beer.

It took a long time, a lot of planning, and a lot of reading, but I got it working. I don't drink a lot of beer, any more, but how cool was it to pull that first draught. Ahh....