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:
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
I was well chuffed
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
In the next instalment i'll be insulating the cold cupboard and with photos taken in better light hopefully :thumb:
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:
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
I was well chuffed
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
In the next instalment i'll be insulating the cold cupboard and with photos taken in better light hopefully :thumb: