Keezer: The Road to New Years
Terms such as New Year's and Christmas are synonymous with their international acknowledgment of Festivus. But why doesn’t the mighty Keezer garner such popularity? Sure, the Keezer is a term commonly known amongst dudes who craft beer in their basement, while New Year and Christmas times share larger implications regarding the human condition, and progress into a new us….. but at this point, you probably still don’t know what a Keezer is. A Keezer is essentially a souped-up chest freezer, that you can store kegs, and a CO2 canister in. This Keezer would be a project that would give joy to a very special boy in the holidays, and result in it being the centerpiece of our New Year's Eve celebration.
Around a month ago I was just returning to Amsterdam from a two-week tour that took place in Indonesia, and even from this life-changing experience the dread of getting my family presents that they would deem worthy haunted me. My sister sent me the jacket she wanted a month ago so that was no problem, I know I would shop in the Bayshore Mall for some small things regarding my sisters-in-law, but that just left my brother-in-law. I was just going to get him the same thing I gifted him last year, which was a barrel!! Why a barrel you ask? Well, this is no ordinary barrel I’m afraid. This is a state-of-the-line sherry barrel! That can age about 4 bottles of rum that we may or may not have produced ourselves. Perhaps I could get a barrel with a new finish, that could give a new alcohol a different flavour. But in my very own Nick way, I wanted to completely upheave everything rather than slightly modify our brewing. So I got to work on putting together a keezer! AKA the most expensive Christmas gift for Josh (my brother-in-law) that he will ever receive from me…..
Finally, my rambling and much-needed backstories come to a close so we can talk about the nitty-gritty of Keezers. A Keezer is essentially a draught system that can function in your basement. So Nick, does that mean that you will just be pounding kegs of Heineken in your basement then? No. But that’s a fair question. Although the Keezer removes the function of bottling, and provides the perfect pour, with that heavenly head that you oh so require, is only half of the tale of the tape. The Keezer is also a way that heavily streamlines the brewing process, by offering C02 to our beers (carbonating it without tablets (that work half the time, or cause bottle explosions), and the Kegs offer vessels that can be fermented under pressure. You can pretty much say that us moving to this new setup is akin to society changing from horses to cars. Up until now the biggest upgrade we have added to our setup was the brewzilla, which allowed us to move our brewing setup from boiling the malts and grains on the stove to a Brewing vessel that can heat the water via a phone app (funny stuff for two dudes brewing in a basement). It also allowed us to streamline the techniques of sparging (using the bucket in the brewzilla that functions as a colander for the grains, where you can let them dry, and then rinse them with portioned-off water that has been treated with a Camden tablet to rinse the grain water back into the pot), using a steam top so we can brew downstairs (by collecting the steam in a metal top that is water cooled), having cooling rods, etc. Before that, we were simply boiling malt on the stoves, and siphoning the drink into bottles, oh a ways we have gone.
So how would I go ahead in acquiring this Keezer? Well, it wouldn’t be much of a blog if I just bought one on the internet and that was that. The reason why this idea never entered my head, is because a draught system can have more hiccups in the system than you think. An O ring needs to be lubed here, and a liquid post is filled with hop junk there…. with all of these problems that come you need to know how your system works, and if it comes pre-made it can be hard to diagnose, or even not be able to fix something that already has a fixed system. What does that mean for us? Well, it means that we need to buy a allot of stuff! We need to find a Chest freezer, big enough to hold four kegs and a CO2 canister, we need four kegs and CO2 canister, some wood, taps, a gas line, a beer line, a temperature regulator liquid/gas connects, some shanks, some metal clips, a CO2 regulator, and a gas on/offline. The great thing about the Keezer setup is that you can buy most of your equipment used! The chest freeze and the kegs can be the pricier items for the setup. With this in mind, I was still in Amsterdam and I simply just wanted to buy all the things in record time so that by the time I got back to Canada we could setup everything in time for Christmas, so I bought most things new from a local brewers store Defalcos in Ottawa.
Eventually, I bought most stuff online that my sister picked up for me, and it was just time to go back to Canada to set it up! I have made my brother-in-law aware of it, so we can make it together, as that would make the gift far more rewarding!
