One year a friend invited me to a big party and asked that I serve up some of my homebrew. I needed a way to dispense the beer. So, I began looking at how to build a jockey box.
What this gadget does is allow me to dispense my homebrew by pushing it through a long coil that is submersed in ice water. This allows the beer in the keg that is at room
temperature to come out of the tap ice cold. To put this together, I grabbed an old cooler I had lying around and drilled a couple of holes in it to allow for a beer line in and
the tap shank. A few inches of hose and some clamps and the inside was complete. Since I didn't know where exactly this jockey box would be sitting, I needed to add a drip tray
to catch any overflow. Therefore, I purchased a piece of sheet metal and using tin snips, I cut the metal so I could form a tray. I "welded" the corners with some epoxy putty
and then painted the whole thing with some plasti dip paint. I then made a template of my "motto" (Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew) and painted that on the front of tray
backsplash. Using a couple of screws, I attached it to the front of the jockey box. Then, of course, I needed some way to display the label for the homebrew so that all
could see what kind of beer was available. To do that, I purchased a banister spindle at the local hardward store and cut it to the length I wanted. I don't have a wood lathe
so using a banister spindle allows me to have some shape to the tap handle. I then cut a couple of pieces of plexi glass out and sandwiched them together and shaped them on a
grinder. I cut a slit in the top of the wood handle to accept the two pieces of plexi glass and drill through the back of the handle to attach the plexi glass to the handle with
a screw. Then, I cut a small length of soft copper pipe length wise to hold the top of the pieces of plexi glass together. The plexi glass allows me to fit my label on the handle
and provides a good measure of protection from it getting wet...either by rain or spilled beer. This thing does a great job and is easy to assemble and tear down for portability.
The front.
The back side.
The guts.
Tap handle.