From Ice Box to Jockey Box
Crafting beer is more than just a hobby, it is a life style. For some, it is a profession, for others a dream for something bigger, a dream to take their passion to the next level. Nonetheless, we all share the same love and desire to create a beer that people, including ourselves, fall in love with.
A beer that pours our story and displays our adventurous character; in hopes that the long path of dedication and hard work shows its true color in the first pour, the first sniff, and finally the first sip. You look into the face of judgment. They look up from their pint with a euphoric smirk on their face as they pronounce, “Wow, that is a damn good beer!”
If you are reading this, you love beer and love brewing it. And if you brew beer you know and feel that beer is a passion. Beer is an endless road of creativity. Beer is a science. As brewers, we take extreme measures to push the boundaries with our ingredients and style but also have to exercise caution with precision, timing, temperature, mash schedules, water chemistry, yeast stability, fermentation conditions, sanitation, and so on.
How do we sleep? We often don’t. We are up every hour checking the fermenter after a previous brew day looking for any sign of active yeast, answering countless questions in our head: Did I pitch a large enough starter? Have I oxygenated the wort enough? Checking off your mental list over and over. We install a camera and baby monitor in the fermentation room to check on it when we are not home. Or maybe all of this is just me.
After all the sleepless nights from recipe formulation to finally transferring it to the keg, with your face gleaming with pride, are you happy going to a homebrew festival and serving your beer out of a plastic cooler? For me, I think not. When life calls on you to bring your creations out of your home to places your kegerator cannot go, whether to a friend’s wedding, family barbeque, a tasting event, or even a competition, it’s time to ditch the plastic cooler and build a portable custom jockey box using mainly the same mechanics.
Here is my design, but be creative and put your own spin on it. You’ve mastered your beer, you’ve mastered your pour, now master your presentation.
Start Your Project
Parts and Tools
• Old icebox fridge (no need for a refrigeration unit)
• 12-volt battery
• AC/DC inverter
• Weatherproof battery box
• Zip ties
• 3⁄8-inch wire loom
• 3⁄16-inch ID beer lines (20 feet/6 m)
• 2 ball lock beer connectors
• 2 ball lock gas connectors
• 3-way gas line manifold
• 1⁄2-inch airline hose with quick disconnects (10 feet/3 m)
• 1⁄2-inch thread to 1⁄2-inch barb fitting
• (3) 11⁄2-inch black iron floor flanges
• (2) 11⁄2-inch close nipples
• 11⁄2-inch street 90-degree elbow
• (2) 11⁄2-inch unions
• (2) 11⁄2-inch to 3⁄4 inch reducers
• (3) 1⁄4-inch self-tapping screws
• (2) 75-foot (23 m) draft coils
• 20-foot (6 m) lamp cord
• 2 Perlick faucets
• 1 lamp holder
• 1 lamp cage
• 1 lightbulb
• Stainless steel box with drain (size dependent on application)
• 1⁄2-inch vinyl tubing (6 feet/1.8 m)
• (2) 24-inch (61-cm) spring tension rods
• 2 Tap handles
Step by Step
1. SOURCING THE ICE CHEST AND MATERIALS
An ice chest or icebox with the look you are going for may not be easy to find. An icebox is the same as a modern refrigerator, minus the condenser, coils, freon, and electricity; an “old school” cooler, if you will. There are lots of options, but if you appreciate rust, age, and patina, or simply character, you can acquire something similar for little or no money. Scuff sand it. Clean it. Sexy.
I found this one under a deck at a lake house. Not sure what I would do with it at the time, but I have an old soul and it was too timeless to leave to rot. As for the coils, I did some research and found a company that made them custom to my dimensions cheaper than I could have made them myself. All other parts can be found at your local hardware store.
2. CONVERTING THE ICE CHEST
When you acquire an old fridge you will have to remove the old workings. Chances are there will be no fluid in the condenser or coils. If there is, drain the fluid and dispose of it properly because dumping it on the ground will eventually make its way into your drinking water and screw up your water chemistry on your next batch of beer!
As the saying goes, “They don’t make things like they used to.” Very true when it comes to these. Solid and perfectly insulated, a 20-lb. (9-kg) bag of ice left in this icebox with an average external temperature of 94 °F (34 °C) lasted three days in the baking sun. So start by constructing a stainless steel box to house the 75-foot (23-m) draft coils for the faucets. Ideally, leave 1 inch (2.5 cm) of clearance on each side as well as 8 inches (20 cm) of depth for ice coverage. Install a 1⁄2-inch thread to 1⁄2 -inch barb fitting on the bottom of the box. Drill a hole through the chest to accommodate the fitting and hose. The inside finish of my chest is porcelain, so it was necessary to use a Carbide drill bit. The drain is important to constantly drain the melted ice from the coils; in order to make sure the ice is always touching the coils for optimum chill.
3. INSTALLING PIPE, FLANGES, AND TAP ASSEMBLY
Remove inner door panel, gasket, and insulation from door. Measure and drill the mounting holes for the floor flanges. Spend the time to find the horizontal center and a comfortable serving height for vertical center. Once you find center, use that to mark the height for left and right floor flanges. The flanges should be bolted and nutted using 1⁄4-inch – 20 bolts and nuts and 1⁄4-inch washers due to the weight of the faucets assembly the added stability has notable strength. Reinstall the insulation, door gasket, and the door’s inside cover. Drill a 1⁄2-inch hole in the center of each flange to fit the draft lines and also the wire for center flange. Run the draft lines through the hole. Install the close nipple as well as the union. Install the draft shank to the 11⁄2 to 3⁄4-inch reducer. The shank nut fits perfectly inside the 3⁄4-inch reducer creating a secure fit. Once the unions are tight, install the Perlick faucets. Install the 11⁄2-inch street 90-degree elbow into the middle floor flange connecting the wire properly to the wire socket. Adhere the light socket to the 11⁄2-inch to 1-inch reducer using brown silicone. Allow it to set before turning upside down.
4. INSTALLING DRAFT LINES AND COILS
The size and length of your draft lines are an important component to proper beer flow. CO2 pressure, beer temperature, and faucets all play a large role in proper flow, but misunderstanding and using the wrong diameter and length of draft line will cause avoidable aggravation when balancing your system. In this application, I used 3⁄16-inch vinyl. It slips perfectly onto the faucet shanks but will need a dip in hot water and some keg lube to slip over the draft coils. With my beer, I chose the standard 12 PSI per typical serving but found I had to raise the pressure to 30 PSI to obtain the proper serving pressure at the faucet. Every system will balance out differently as it depends on the size, rise, and run of your draft line. If you don’t want to do the math, I found that 30 PSI with a rise of 3 feet (0.9 m) and with a 6 foot (1.8 m) 3⁄16-inch line attached to the 75-foot (23-m) stainless coil gave me 1 PSI serving pressure at the faucet, which was ideal.
5. INSTALLING THE ELECTRICAL SYSTEM
Being an electrician is easy: I would know, I am one by trade. However, doing it properly and safely is the objective because the alternative is catastrophic failure, death, fire, explosions, yada yada. In all seriousness, it’s a lightbulb and some simple terminations. If you do not have experience wiring lighting, bribe an electrician with some homebrew. Or, this whole step can be skipped, but for some of us (me), I really needed a lightbulb to be able to serve outdoors in the evening. I went with an Edison style lightbulb because of its character. That lamp runs solely on AC power but if I built a portable icechest because I can’t bring my kegerator where there is no AC power, why would I choose a lamp that runs on AC? Because it simply looks cool, that’s all I got. I installed a 12 volt battery housed in a weather proof battery box in the lower frame of the icechest with power leads up to a weather proof AC/DC 1,000-watt inverter. With use of a junction box, a remote control relay, and a short power cord to plug into the inverter, you now have a dimmable remote-controlled light.
6. INSTALL GAS LINES, MANIFOLD, & FINISHING TOUCHES
Run the 1⁄4-inch ID air hose line to your CO2 manifold. Install the manifold out of the way as to not disturb the flow of taking your kegs in and out. Run the hose out of the back of the chest, fasten, and strap accordingly. Install quick disconnects on the hose and the CO2 tank. In this application, there is no room for the CO2 tank inside the ice chest. We could remove a keg to accommodate the tank, but that would leave us with only 1 keg (not acceptable!). Since the pressure in the tank changes drastically depending on the temperature, expect to adjust your regulator to the proper serving PSI with the rate of temperature change. Have an extra keg filled with a line cleaner solution. Hook up to each tap and run a gallon (4 L) of the cleaner solution through the lines and check for leaks. If there are no leaks, go ahead and fill the stainless box with ice and connect your kegs of beer. Draw your beer until it pushes out all of the cleaner. Let the beer sit in the coils for 10 minutes. Once the first 75 feet has chilled, you will have cold beer the rest of the day.
