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Home Photo Galleries Equipment Galleries Ken Thornton • Wichita Falls, Texas

The center of the homebrew universe lies on an 18-acre farm near Wichita Falls, Texas. (Hyperbole? Nah.) Anyway, that’s where homebrewer Ken Thornton lives. It’s also where he runs the Wichita Homebrew Supply Shop. A metal warehouse across the drive from the shop serves as headquarters for WORTS (Wichita’s Only Real Tasty Suds), the local homebrew club. The warehouse is also home to Ken’s brewing equipment and his walk-in beer cooler. And the cooler is very cool indeed.

The best part of the main cooler is the door, which contains nine tap handles. Ken keeps homebrew on tap for club members, along with root beer and Gatorade. “After all, this is Texas,” says Thornton. “Sometimes even homebrewers need fluids other than beer.”

Ken Mans the Taps
To build the cooler, Ken walled off a corner of the warehouse that measures roughly 4 by 9 feet. He insulated the room with fiberglass and three inches of spray-on urethane, then added a cooling system that he built from a refrigeration coil, a compressor and a thermostat.

Cornelius Kegs
The system keeps the room temperature between 34 and 38 °F. He also enclosed a 6- by 3-foot space under his brew sink and rigged it to a second thermostat. A blower draws cold air from the cooler into this second fermentation chamber, which he keeps at 68 °F for ales.

Tap Lines


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