How To Find The Perfect Beer Fridge

On a hot afternoon, there is nothing like a nice cold beer to wash away the day. Hey, there’s nothing better than a cold beer any day of the week. While your house refrigerator is an okay place to sit your brewskis, they never get cold enough there and placing them in the freezer to be forgotten about can be a beer explosion waiting to happen.

Having an ice chest is always the best way to go as you plunge your hand in the cool icy water and pluck out your heavenly slice of cold, crisp, down-to-earth refreshment but who wants to go back to the store to get more ice in the middle of the big game.

The best solution for beer lovers is getting a beer fridge. Whether you are going for a full blown kegerator (beer’s best friend) or just a simple cooler, a handy dandy beer fridge is your best bet for cold beers on demand.

These beauties don’t have to be fancy. You can pick up a small refrigerator at any hardware super chain for below a hundred bucks. If you want to save money, there is probably a friend or relative who still has his old college dorm fridge sitting in storage somewhere and won’t mind giving it to you for next to nothing.

The only substantial cost is investing in a temperature controller and these can be found at a local homebrew store. Beer fridges can be fickle things due to that little freezer compartment and it is a good idea to regulate the fridge during hot and cold seasons, especially if you plan on doing some home brews of your own and need to control fermentation. If you live in an environment that never varies too far from cold year round, then you probably don’t need a thermometer.

There are two blatantly obvious reasons to having a beer fridge. The first, especially if you have a family or roommates, is that too many people go in and out of the house fridge for it ever to maintain the exact temperature needed to keep your beer chilled. Having a separate fridge for your beverages eliminates this issue unless you’re pounding your brewskis to quick for the fridge to keep up.

The second reason is convenience. Having a beer cooler nearby in your living room or den, maybe in your rec room in the basement, during a big game or when you’re winding down form a day’s work makes life just a little more enjoyable.

And let’s not forget the coolness factor of having a place where only your beers and you belong.

For beer lovers across the world, there is one hot issue that constantly haunts their sleep at night. Tossing and turning, weighing the taste of draft beer against bottle, haunted by the size of their house or apartment and the available money in their pockets, these aficionados of lagers, stouts, and ales can’t decide, when that special day arrives, between a beer fridge and a kegerator.

So what’s the distinction?
These terms are often used interchangeably, but there are major differences in their execution.

A beer fridge can be just a undemanding beat-up small fridge that is simply used to store your beer separately from your house refrigerator. Usually costing less than a hundred dollars, these handy appliances make that big game more enjoyable, especially if you don’t have a girlfriend or a dog to fetch you a fresh brew.

Having a place to keep your beer separate might also be necessary if your thirty-pack is constantly getting harassed by the food your wife keeps trying to put in the house fridge, as we already know broccoli and beer never get along no matter how she tries to cook it.
Now, a kegerator is a completely different animal. This not just a simple place to store beer, but an individual investment in keeping fresh draft on hand at all times.

Let’s face it, a nice cold draft beer is always better than a bottle or can. There is no comparison, no argument, and no drunken debate that can ever say otherwise. But if you ever survived a keg party the next day with a half full pony, then you know how quickly draft beer goes flat without a proper dispensing machine.

Having a place in your home to dispense keg quality beer is a major investment. Kegerators usually start around 300 hundred dollars and that doesn’t include the price of your keg or the CO 2 tank that keeps the beer fresh. You can convert an old refrigerator to handle the business of dispensing draft beer but other than for the sheer attempt of pulling it off, this is never the way to go.

Sometimes, you can find used kegerators on Craigslist or even at yard sales near colleges that have fraternities. Another source is an auction for a bar closing. While buying a used kegerator may seem cheap now, models that are too old might cost you in electricity consumption in the long run.

In the end, it comes down to how much you have to spend to get a crisp cool refreshing beer. You’ll never feel more like the king of your castle until owning a beer fridge or a kegerator.
Heck.

Why not get both?