Keg’s of beer are, ounce per ounce, the most economical way to buy beer. However, keg beer is unique in that it is unpasteurized and must always be kept refrigerated or else it will go bad.

If you ever go to a party that has a keg, you may notice that people have a tendency to want to drink the entire contents of the keg in one night. This is because with kegs being as large as they are, it usually isn’t feasible to put them into a normal refrigerator.

In their normal commercial applications, kegs of beer are sold to taverns that keep them stored in large refrigerators underneath the bar, and connect the beer through tubing to the bar taps (beer faucets). It is through this way that bars are able to keep their kegs of beer stored without them having to worry about going bad.

Now here’s where kegerators come in. Let’s say you want to keep a keg, which contains 165 12oz cups of beer, in your house for you and your roommates/friends to drink for the next month. You’d need a fridge to put it in right? Well, a kegerator acts as a fridge that’s just big enough to hold a keg, with the faucet from the bar in which the beer comes out of.

The beer stays cold, and you and your friends have a huge amount to drink over the course of the next month or so.

Now, there are two ways to come about owning a kegerator. The easy, albeit expensive way is to go out and buy one. Ones that hold a full-sized keg are going for $541.84 at Walmart.com (and going under the name: “Haier 1/2 Keg BrewMaster Beer Dispenser & Refrigerator”.

The more economical way is to make one yourself. Basically, you need two things: a kegerator conversion kit that can be bought on eBay for $100-$120, and a fridge big enough to hold a keg.

Those trying to attain this Goal, as have I, would appear to prefer the second method.

When I made mine, I had a 4.4 cu ft mini-fridge and just bought a conversion kit online. I had an old C02 tank for my paintball gun and used a “paintball remote” to connect it with the kegerator conversion kit (which cost $15 and saved me $70 on a 5lb c02 tank). Then, using a Dremmel tool I’d picked up for $5 at a pawnshop in town, cut a hole in the roof of the fridge and attached the kegerator top. After hollowing out the fridge, connecting all the parts and making a few more alterations like adding a drain, my buddies and I were pretty much set to drink all the keg beer we wanted without ever leaving my dorm room.

A word of caution however, I wouldn’t recommend building one of these to anyone who isn’t comfortable in a hardware store, as you may have to buy a few miscellaneous nuts and bolts to make sure everything fits correctly.

But for those who do, it’s definately worth it, and with the difference in cost of actually buying a one as opposed to making your own, you can fill your kegerator many times over. ;)