Kegerator Build - Part 1

This is the story of building a kegerator.  But first, some context.

I purchased a kegerator about a year ago from Costco.  Made by Danby, it was basically a smaller freezer that included all of the keg distribution hardware.  Assembly was simple out of the box and for its purposes, the kegerator was decent.  It fit all sized kegs - including the wide band Coors and the 15.5 gallon model.  Initially the kegerator didn't come with the keg stand (see picture below), but a call to Danby and a discussion with their customer service department finally got one shipped.

  
There was a major problem I had with foamy beer.  Every pour would produce about half of a glass of head. Adjusting the pressure did not help at all.  PSI too low caused flat beer, and too high was just way too much foam.  I posted my problem to the kegerator forums on Micromatic and got some really good advice.

Apparently this is a common problem with Danby kegerators - the liquid temperature of the beer does not get cold enough.  Since the unit is basically a freezer, it does have the ability to get extremely cold but they've installed a temperature sensor there to prevent ice and freezing which inadvertently prevents it from getting cold enough.  When the sensor detects ice, it will start warming up the kegerator.  The external display will read 38 degrees, but upon measuring the liquid temperature of the beer, you'll find it to be 40-42 degrees.  Hence the foam.

The folks on the Micromatic forums were every helpful and directed me to a thread describing some kegerator improvements, specifically for the Danby model.  Some people get pretty detailed with their improvements - adding a fan and blower to cool the draft tower, bypassing the temperature controls with an external controller, and even adding longer beer lines.  For my setup, the installation of a 33k resistor (less than a dollar at Radio Shack) in the sensor actually allowed the beer to get cold enough and fixed the biggest problem!

While this kegerator served us well, it certainty wasn't perfect.  Despite my desire for making additional improvements, it just didn't make sense to keep the Danby kegerator considering the physical limitations of the model.  Plus, in talking to someone who brews beer for a living and drinking beer from his kegerator (which he said was built in one weekend), I realized there was potential for something better out there.

So, a quick post to Craigslist and the Danby kegerator is now gone.  Onto building a new kegerator.