Kegerator for Guinness

I took the keg back today from Saturday night’s Yuengling party. I’ve spent the past few weeks researching home brewing, kegerators, etc. I am definitely in the market for some sort of kegerator. Initially I looked for kits I could use to convert a mini-fridge into a complete Kegerator. Unfortunately I had a hard time finding a mini-fridge big enough to support a full size (1/2) keg. I’m thinking about spending a little extra money and buying a real kegerator that is designed for just that purpose, and can hold a variety of kegs (one 1/2, two 1/4’s, or 2 5 gallons).

I’ve been interested in home brewing for a while (since meeting Bob McCouch), but haven’t done too much research on the subject until recently. While there are many intricacies involved, it seems to be a lot like the challanges of cooking where a slight variation in ingredients can drastically change the finished product. It’s just that with home brewing the time scale is slowed down significantly. If I ever want to get seriously into home brewing, I will need a way to tap the kegs.

The added benefit of having a kegerator around is that I can tap my favorite commercial beer should I choose (e.g. Guinness). Both of these are possible thanks to having utilities included in my rent at my new apartment. For home brewing, it’s the heating, water, and refridgeration that make the brew and that would all be free. The only expenses I would have would be the CO₂ (nitrogen/CO₂ mix in the case of Guinness) and the ingredients.

Going into this I thought that tapping a keg of Guinness would be pretty expensive because of all the custom equipment required, but in fact it turns out that it would be an extremely good deal! I just wanted to type this out so I would have it as a reference, and in case anyone else out there cared. For reference I will use a can from a 4-pack I bought recently at Price Chopper. Including taxes and deposit, the 4-pack cost $7.23, which is $1.80 per 14.9 oz can. That works out to $1.93 per pint.

A 1/2 keg of Guinness from Norm’s Beer and Wine goes for $130. Unlike the New York mandated $130 deposit on kegs, Virginia has no law like that! Anyway, each keg serves up 15.5 gallons of beer, or ~124 pint glasses-worth. That comes out to about $1.05/pint of Guinness, a savings of almost $0.90/pint, or about $111 for the same volume of beer! In fact, since I’m saving almost half, I could almost afford to buy two kegs for the price of the same volume of canned beer.

I also asked about some of my other favorites, shown below:

Boddingtons $115
Yuengling $73

I called a few other stores in the area, and they couldn’t match Norm’s prices. Anyway, as if you needed another reason to visit exciting me, you can come for a few free quality beverages!

Before I end this, fellow Guinness fans will be just as baffled as I about this fact (straight from the Guinness homepage):

The UK is the biggest consumer of GUINNESS® followed by Ireland in second place, and Nigeria in third, and the USA in fourth