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Briess: BYO IMP12-13 (started Nov. 1, 2012)
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When my wife and I decided to venture into the wonderful world of home ownership, we had many things in mind for our dream home. The singular most important thing: “where can I build the bar?”

I decided on a five-tap set up and an L-shaped bar that would best make use of the space, while offering comfortable seating for six. I framed, skinned, and topped that bar completely from scratch.

Frame
Being a lover of art and music, I decided to completely cover one of the lower walls in LP records. There are more than 175 records collaged on the wall spanning several decades and many genres of music. The wall behind the bar is covered with an eclectic mix of album covers.

Records
I decided go big or go home. I utilized a small closet just outside of the bar room to house my keezer with a collar built on to house six kegs. This gave me great freedom for the actual bar itself. I ended up with a finished bar that goes out 8-feet from the wall on the long side, and 3.5-feet on the short side of the L. It enabled me to build a full lower/working countertop underneath the 8-foot section of the bartop for drink mixing, glassware, etc. and shelves underneath the 3.5 foot section for music/entertainment center pieces.

Keezer
The only problem this brought up was, how am I going to keep the beer cold from the keezer to the bar? This was easily remedied by using an empty corny keg inside of the keezer full of a glycol/water mixture and a pond pump. The five beer lines are wrapped around half-foot lines sending glycol from the freezer to the tap station, and then returning back into the keezer and into the glycol keg. The whole trunk line is then wrapped in several layers of insulation to keep what’s cold, cold, and eliminate condensation.

Kegs
Adding to this theme of reconditioned “trash” turned to treasure, I decided to finish my bartop in bottlecaps. Over 1600 bottlecaps line the bartop. I started with a few hundred, and realized quickly I was going to have to come up with some more caps fast! Through generous donations from friends, bars, and even strangers, I finally had enough caps to finish the bartop, and not a single “bad” beer up there, and plenty of interesting, and very rare caps.

Bartop
I framed my tap box out of 4x4s, covered it in license plates collected by my father-in-law through the years, and finished it with five shiny perlick faucets.

Taps
The finishing touches to the bar were the end case, holding five beer mugs for “honored brothers,” and the glass blocks with rope lights behind them on the face of the bar.

No Crap on Tap
What red-blooded male doesn't dream of having a home bar? Add to that a love for home brewing and that dream becomes an obsession.

Finished Bar


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