New Year, New Beer! This Time it’s Kegerator Style

Hey there fellow sippers! It’s been a while, but Sips N Tips is back and ready to travel, eat, and drink the way through this new decade!

I thought I’d start with a little update on a new-to-us asset that has been “fueling” us for the past couple of months…

A kegerator!

Yes, I know, it seems excessive. But there’s a story behind the acquisition of this Kegerator that goes a little something like this:

1. Over the summer of 2019 we moved to a new home.
2. Naturally, a housewarming party was in order.
3. Naturally, a keg must accompany any good housewarming party.
4. BUT, not nearly enough of the keg was consumed that day, which meant days upon days of replenishing the keg bucket with ice to keep this poor, helpless beer chilled to the point of enjoyability.
5. The need to frequently replenish ice led to the excessive cost of ice, which led me to say something along the lines of “we should just invest in a kegerator”. To which my husband said, “that seems excessive”.
6. SO, I adjusted my initial statement to say something like, “If we happened to find a used kegerator within a 5-mile radius of our home for less than $150, then we should get a kegerator”. To which my husband obliged (probably with an eyeroll).
7. Defeated, I figured the chances of finding a kegerator with that criteria were slim-to-none. But I should at least open the LetGo app to check, right?
8. RIGHT! Because 3.5 miles from our home, someone was selling a lightly-used kegerator for $150. But it gets better—they dropped the price when we actually showed up to buy it due to a malfunctioning part (that Tucker quickly-but-silently diagnosed as fixable), making this kegerator the deal of a century.
9. It found its home along the beverage wall of our garage and was filled with its first keg just before Thanksgiving.
10. Now all it needs is a name…any suggestions?

Currently on the Kegerator Tap:

Institution IPA from Institution Ale Company in Camarillo, California. (I wrote about Institution here, too!) It’s their flagship beer, a West Coast IPA, filled with Columbus, Simcoe, Mosaic, and Centennial Hops and bursting with flavor and freshness in every sip. It rings in at 7.5% ABV and 65 IBU. It’s absolutely excellent on draft! There’s nothing quite like fresh beer…

Speaking of fresh beer, I’ve been thinking about (and reading about) trying my hand at homebrewing. Any experts out there have advice for starting that process? Maybe that will be the next batch of beer in the kegerator!

I’m also accepting other recommendations for kegs to try in the future…drop them in the comments below! Cheers, happy sipping, and happy 2020 friends.