My bar, from creation to completion (loads of piccies!)

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BrewStew

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I thought I'd take some time to document the progress of building and modifying my bar after I just battled with it for 2 hours earlier this evening :lol:

I guess I hope this will be of some inspiration to others on building a bar on a small and steady budget.

This project has been ongoing pretty much since my second or third ever brew from kits.

Hopefully one day it will be at a stage of "finished" before it falls apart from age and wear! :lol:

Anyways, here's how it started out almost two years ago:

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total bits to get that far were 2 sheets of MDF, a sheet of thin bendy wood for the tap stand, a big bag of screw-block (dunno the proper name) some 2x4 to go around the underside of the base for some rigidity, a rather large offcut of kitchen worktop that my mate had going spare, some hinges, some door knobs and lots of screws.

it took me two evenings of building and one of painting to get that far.

I built the bar with an enclosed cupboard for the gas and reg on the right, and had the intention of putting a bar fridge in the left space, but that never happened in the end.

this was the first All Grain pint poured from the new bar, and with the fourth tap in place :cool:

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I was well chuffed :cool:

I was quite happy with it until i moved house and changed jobs last year. then i started to hunt around for parts to upgrade my fermenting vessel and asked the landlord next door to where i work if he had a chiller going spare... he did! but the chiller never made it to the garage and promptly got put at the bar for testing purposes of course. it's stayed there since and will probably remain there if i can find another chiller cheap enough before i get around to making a 100L FV.

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most recently the bar took on a couple of beer engines but to get them to work with my bar, i needed to take a saw to the worktop... and i meant business!

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the engines needed their bases repainting to try to get them more into the colour scheme of the bar, and partly because the varnish was knackered.

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with this wonderful forum being the wealth of knowledge that it is, i was pointed out that these little beauties (cask creamer tips) are the dogs danglies (thanks Vossy :thumb: . I also got some drip trays.

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because of the new beer engines, I've had to think about re-jigging the piping layout underneath the bar, and decided to mount the regs and gas bottles outside of the "cold cupboard" as i figured that the kegs themselves will keep the cupboard cold, and me opening the doors to turn the gas and regs off daily cant help with it maintaining it's own cold temperature, so lots of drilling, screwing, sweating, and swearing took place tonight, but it's done :thumb:

I also recently got two shiny drip trays from KingUK as i felt my bar towels were not only an excellent bacteria spot, but made the place look a bit shabby.

so here's comes a load of piccies showing you where it's at right this minute, complete with a few extra shots showing you what's going on behind the scenes:

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In the next instalment i'll be insulating the cold cupboard and with photos taken in better light hopefully :thumb:
 
nice one BS. I might read it again before bedtime as a soothing night time story

loved how the plastic bottles etc got replaced with shiney gadget things as time went on
 
WOW!!! looks great.. i'm a few years behind but will get there one day.. and good effort on the first pint of AG... i'm hopefully about 2weeks away from my first AG experience.... 6weeks away from my first AG pint!!!

Great addition of the bear engine a must in my opinion!!!

Congrats!!! :clap:
 
thanks folks :thumb:

just to clarify (i wrote it badly, sorry) that wasn't my first ever AG... it was my third, but it was the first of my AG brews to be poured at/through the bar :thumb:

I'm looking forward to getting this finished.... just insulating the cold cupboard, a cooling system for the cold cupboard, a chrome footrail, a round arm rail, kitchen worktop edging for the cut part on the beer engines, and painting it all to go! :party: and all will be documented here :cool:
 
I was going to insulate the cold cupboard with camping mats this evening, but in a moment of inspiration when i was looking back through the pictures here I suddenly came up with a pretty cool plan, which i wanted to put into action before the insulation of the cold cupboard.

I looked closely at the photo of my chiller and wondered why there are ports for a coolant line, but no piping...

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and then i pondered whether or not this chiller had a python pump. I was thinking about this most of the afternoon at work, as i wanted/needed a python pump to put my future plan of cooling the cold cupboard with an ATC 800 into action before the weather warms up and also because both my beer engines have water jackets that i wanted to make use of.

anyway i got home and the first thing i did was pull out the bar and take out the chiller... nearly doing my slipped disc in, in the process as it was full of water with no way of getting it out.

i popped the lid off and had a butchers... this is what i saw

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sadly i was dissapointed to see that what i thought maybe a pump that could be re routed, was infact a propeller to cause turbulence in the water to stop it freezing.... doh :(

then i remembered :idea: i had a spare Scottsman pump in the garage that i was planning on using in the brewery once i'd sorted out a HERMS system... but that's a long way off due to finance reasons.

to my surprise the pump had EXACTLY the same connector that this chiller uses to power the propeller!!!! what a stroke of luck!

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i'm very glad i didn't cut the plug off that one when i got it now!!!!!!

i hooked it up and did a very quick flick on the switch to see if it worked.... it DID! :party:

absolutely dazed by the stroke of luck i got to work with manufacturing a way of neatly getting the piping from the reservoir of the chiller out to the pump and made these copper bent pipes.

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i couldn't poke the pipes through the holes in the case, and dip them in the reservoir. i had thought about solder an elbow in place but didn't want to melt the insulation on the neighbouring pipes. so i improvised.

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a quick test to see if it works and my hose clips didn't leak....

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YAY!

but then i noticed a flaw in my design... both the outlet and the pickup were within an inch of each other. this would not give enough disturbance to the water to stop it freezing, and also not get the full cooling effect of the water... so i bent the return line and pointed it more towards the middle of the reservoir

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after testing, it worked a treat and there was a good amount of turbulence.

i deliberately bent it out of harms way of the propeller. the propeller didn't get hooked up... but if i have trouble with freezing i can always get some connectors to have both the pump and propeller running at the same time later :cool:

after some more re plumbing under the bar... more sweating, swearing etc... the whole bar is now re-plumbed.. the water jackets of the beer engines are now hooked up to the pump.. and i must say... it works REALLY well. my keg is at room temperature, and the stout is pouring through it just cold enough to make it really refreshing, but not cold enough that it's too cold for real ale from a hand pull :cool:

i'm actually wondering about the cold cupboard now... if the beer poured through the engines comes out this cold... i'm wondering if they'll be TOO cold if the beer temperature is 12'c... it probably would be. so maybe i dont actually need a cold cupboard anymore. hmmm. more pondering required methinks :hmm:

anyways i'm pretty chuffed right now... all but one of my dispensers are chilled through or by the chiller :cool:

more to come as soon as i think of somthing and/or tinker some more :thumb:
 
Fantastic set up there BS, I didn't read the text but the pictures looked great. Those Hi-Gene engines are the mutts nuts :thumb:
 
vossy, i'm now 5 pints down on an empty stomach... the pictures are starting to look clearer... perhaps you need to drink more? :D
 
haha! oh don't tempt me... i've had my eye on a reconditioned Bar Billiards table for a very long time now... especially as they don't need the kind of room regular pool tables do.... it would fit perfectly under my open stairs :cool:
 

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