Tips for a new keg setup.

[bigturkey]

Hello all!
Haven't spent much time lurking here lately but a few of you blokes helped me out a great deal with my first brews, late last year. Since then I've managed to find a bit of quality in my beer, main benefits have been a wine cooler for stable fermentation temperatures ($125 from Target - brilliant), and the excellent partial grain kits from Dave's Homebrew. Now that I've got a few brews behind me, my beer is starting to taste pretty good and I'm keen to start kegging.

I've had a read through some of the posts here, and I like the idea of the 9lt kegs form kegsonline; mainly because I like the idea of turning the bottom of the kitchen fridge into a bar (who needs lettuce crispers anyway?)

I guess really I'm looking for help with a starter shopping list. My thoughts so far are:
- 2x 9L kegs from kegsonline
- 1x Uni Star Beer gun, from the same place

What I'm not sure about is the regulator and CO2 bottle.

Basically, I'd like to keep all this in the bottom of the fridge, so I guess I'm looking for a CO2 bottle that I can store in there as well (unless that's a bad idea?). I'm thinking I should get something that's a balance between capacity and compactness. I was wondering about the soda stream kits?

I'm also thinking that I'm quite likely to get a few 19L kegs later on, so it's important that the gassing setup is suitable for that too. Any advice on a bottle and regulator here would be greatly appreciated!

thanks very much!
Rich

[Tipsy]

Those 9lt kegs are a thing of beauty, bought one myself.

I do worry about how much gas you will go through with the soda stream bottles if it is your only source of gas. I only use mine to dispense and have only used it on one keg.

I use the Harris regulator which is a little cheaper than the micromatic.

You really should give Ross from Craftbrewer a call so he can talk you through it as there is a lot of little costly things that you will need

[bigturkey]

Thanks. So if I dispense with sodastream it'd still be a good idea to have a big CO2 bottle around for carbonating beer, cleaning kegs etc?

[Prawned]

I would recommend getting one of the Bronco Faucet & Hose($15?) combo's from an online store. I just used mine for the first time tonight and it works almost better than my expensive tap!

[bigturkey]

One of these? http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=729

Great! $15 can't go wrong

[Prawned]

One of these? http://www.craftbrewer.com.au/shop/details.asp?PID=729

Great! $15 can't go wrong

Yep, thats the one far better than my mates expensive beer gun.. but not as good as my celli (now i have it pouring nice)

[Trough Lolly]

Yeah, me too! I bought a very pricey Ventmatic tru flo tap and when it blocked up, I used the cobra tap as a standby tap - well, several months later I still haven't resumed using the tru flo tap!! Yes, I've been slack!

Cheers,
TL