Compact Kegging

Almost every homebrewer I've met became fed up with bottling their beer at some point and made the jump to kegging.  Generally this involves dedicating an old fridge or chest freezer to serve as a cold box for the kegs.  As a small apartment brewer, this is a huge challenge.  What can you do without adequate space for a kegerator?

My solution was to get some 3-gallon corny kegs and pray that they would fit in my kitchen refridgerator.  As it turned out, I could fit two of them in there after removing one half-width shelf.  To get acquainted with the process of kegging, I decided to start by naturally carbonating the beer in the keg by priming it with corn sugar (as one would for bottling).  Then I hooked up a keg charger to push the beer out.

That turned out to be a pretty bad solution.  I kegged two batches in this manner and both of them came out improperly carbonated and having a little gassy taste (perhaps from excessive CO2 squirting from my chargers).  I decided I had to take the plunge and get a proper 5lb CO2 thank and regulator, and again pray that it would fit in the fridge.  If that didn't work, then I would have picked up a mini-fridge somewhere and tried to hide from my fianceé.  But to my delight, the tank, regulator, and both 3-gallon kegs do indeed fit in the fridge, taking up about 1/3 of the space.  This is fine, as we don't keep a lot of items in our fridge (we eat fresh and shop often).

So there you have it.  It is possible to keg in your apartment if you get some small kegs.  Unfortunately they are extremely expensive these days and very hard to come by on the used market.  I was lucky enough to spot a few at my local homebrew shop for a good price.