The very first step in having your own kegerator is deciding what what kind of base appliance you want to fit your needs. There are basically four options available to you.

1. Upright refrigerator. The upright needs little explanation, look in your kitchen and imagine one or more beer faucets coming out of the side or front. Ta da, the kegerator. With a few small changes to the inside most standard refrigerators can handle three or more five gallon “corny” kegs or one 8 or 16 gallon commercial keg. The major upside to this is the ease of loading the kegs, the vertical distance is not far. Two drawbacks are: tap placement, if done on the door, opening the freezer compartment carelessly could result in spilled beer and in living space an extra upright might look bulky and out of place.
2. Chest freezer. The chest freezer is my favorite because it is really versatile. With the required temperature controller installed there is huge control over the serving temp of the beer. I like most of my beers very cold, but when its time to lager, I can let it get much warmer. Serving from a chest freezer can be done either through a tower in the top or build a collar to elevate the lid and put the taps through there. (I’ll be posting pictures of that later if it isn’t clear.) One major downside to the chest freezer is having to lift the keg up so far to get it in. Five gallons of beer is not light.
3. Minifridge, or dorm fridge. The challenge with the dorm fridge is finding one without the freezer compartment, large enough to hold two kegs and in decent shape. Once all those criteria are met, they can be dressed up pretty slick and take up little space.
4. Commercial beer fridge. Some retailers actually sell ready made beer fridges complete with tower, gas  cylinder and enough space for a 16 keg. They are big enough to fit three cornies and a 10lb cylinder. Unfortunately they are also fairly expensive.

Figure out where to put the kegerator, how many batches or commercial kegs might be in use at a time and we’re on our way to beer on tap.

I’ve converted three of the four options to homebrew kegerators (I’ve not done the minifridge) and will outline the process for each in the coming weeks.

Cheers!