I saw this draught tower on pinterest and I knew I HAD to build one.
It totally matches my style in almost every way. Black, industrial, rugged. Did I mention that BEER COMES OUT OF IT?!? They are selling them on etsy for $285 with faucets and glycol lines, but I’m the kind of guy who never wants to spend money buying something I could conceivably build it myself, so I started pricing out pieces from amazon. You can see on the tee that it’s a 2″ tee, so I designed everything else with 2″ black iron pipe.
I haven’t found prices to be significantly better at HD or Lowes vs amazon, and I like being able to get it all from one place as opposed to a bunch of different vendors so I spec’d out the first round at amazon
2″ to 1″ bushings 2x $9.05
2″ tee x1 $17.01
2″ street elbow 2x $12.33
2″ x 6″ black iron nipple $9.85
2″ floor flange $9.99
Adding Faucets – Deluxe
Just to go ahead and price things out fully, The “Deluxe” faucet setup would be the Perlick 630ss faucet from AIH ($39.99) with the options below.
3 1/8″ ss Shank ($19.99)
3/16 Tailpiece assembly ($6.89)
Faucet Knob ($3.99)
Total – $70.86 each / $142 for two. Beer line is cheap enough that I’m not going to worry about pricing it.
Adding Faucets – Budget
And the Budget choice would be the cheapo “chrome beer faucet” from AIH here for $13.99
And the 3 1/8 Faucet shank ($14.99)
With the options below.
3/16 Tail piece assembly ($4.10)
Total = $33 each / $66 for both It’s not the highest quality taps, but it’s a damn good price considering this economy 2 tap setup from AIH goes for 119 and is way uglier looking.
Construction considerations:
The pipe will need to be insulated from the beer lines or else you will end up serving warm beer for the first pour or so. This can be done a few ways, but the best way is to run a tube of coolant up into each of the towers and back into the fridge. Get a tiny pump to circulate fluid through that line and you won’t have to worry about the beer warming up. Some people do something similar with a fan and a tube to blow cool air in place of water.
I don’t know how deep the street elbows are, so there is a small chance that the shank will need to be shorter. Feel free to buy the pipe first and then measure the internal clearance. If the 3 1/8 Shank is too small, then this stainless steel column shank 90 degree assembly ($30) should be perfect. This is the Budget version of the same piece – Chrome column shank 90 degree assembly ($14)
Lastly, none of the pipe connections need to be SUPER TIGHT as they don’t need to be water tight. If you are having trouble getting them to line up, a few wraps of teflon tape on the male threads may fix it.