Ice Cream and Gelato

 Custard bases, flavoring methods, choosing an ice-cream maker

Expanding my repertoire of awesome cooking endeavors, I’ve recently started making ice cream. But to be more technical, I use more milk than heavy cream in my recipes so I’ve exclusively been making gelato. Research suggests that more cream (ratios vary) makes the smooth, rich, fatty ice creams that we’re used to in Ben and Jerry’s or Breyers. Using the gelato ratios is healthier in terms of frozen cream consumption, but that shouldn’t be the one reason you choose gelato over ice cream recipes. But it is one good reason. 

I have found experimenting with flavors that gelato (less butter fat) allows for your fresh ingredient flavors to shine. I still choose to shoot for a creamy custard base which takes practice to get right. Tempering eggs can be difficult and egg-spensive if you’re just practicing. But if your chosen flavor compliments the creamy custard well, then you can barely tell a difference between higher heavy cream ratios compared to higher milk ratios.

As an example, my creamiest gelato thus far has been lavender-honey flavored. For reasons I am not 100% sure about, this flavor produced the highest quality ice cream mouth feel yet, even though I wasn’t completely thrilled about how much the lavender infusion came through. My biggest failure was a simple vanilla (using the same cream to milk ratio) that I must have not tempered correctly or didn't re-freeze fast enough. The resulting gelato came out icy and hard.

Tempering eggs is the process of mixing the hot milk base with egg yolks in a specific effort to not scramble your eggs. This means being patient when adding the hot milk to the yolks while ensuring a thorough mix of those ingredients. You can go through a dozen eggs pretty quickly just practicing the custard base so I suggest using inexpensive eggs in your first attempts, holding onto the egg whites for omelettes, fried rice, breakfast sandwiches or other delicious eggy meals. 

You can then further elevate your gelato game by using organic milk, expensive heavy cream, and if you’re lucky enough to have the source, fresh eggs. Experiment with interesting flavor combinations after you’ve mastered the custard base and you’ll be rewarded with gelato that can make you proud.

A while ago I made a simple vanilla extract using Tahitian vanilla beans steeped in Kettle One vodka. It has a wonderful aroma that imparts a more natural experience than regular store bought vanilla extract. I used this homemade vanilla extract on all my early inexpensive custard bases and was able to hone in on the skill needed to temper the eggs, learn the nuances of a Kitchen Aid ice cream attachment and figure out where my skills needed to improve. All the while still producing an amazing gelato that I am proud of.

Below are my chosen custard base ingredients used for Gelato. This is not a step-by-step instruction for making gelato, so be sure to read “Step 2 - flavoring” before you choose to get started based on my experiences:

2 cups milk

1 cup heavy cream

4 egg yolks

½ cup sugar

Step 1 - making your custard base

In a medium saucepan, mix milk and cream. Warm until foam forms around the edges. Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar until frothy (I do this directly in my stand-mixer bowl using the paddle attachment or the whisk attachment). Gradually pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Return mixture to saucepan; cook over medium heat, stirring until the mixture gels slightly and coats the back of the spoon. If small egg lumps begin to show, remove from heat immediately.

At this point, while the mixture is still hot, I will strain the hot custard base through a strainer (not a big mesh, but also not a sieve-size mesh) to capture any bits of scrambled eggs you may have accidentally formed. And from here, your options are nearly limitless!

Step 2 - flavoring

As I described above, this is where you would add your vanilla extract to make vanilla gelato. I strain the custard base directly into a bowl that already has my vanilla extract in it; I go with 2 ½ teaspoons for the ratios listed above. 

Other flavors, based on milk infusions, would require you to add the flavor during the final heating process but before the straining. For example, you can add matcha powder to make green tea ice cream - the heat helps incorporate the powder and straining after helps remove any lumps that have formed. 

In my lavender-honey example, you add the oil-based infusion ingredient during the first heating and mixing of the cream and milk. I loosely followed a recipe which called for 2 tablespoons of dried lavender but if I were to do it again, I would reduce it to 1 tablespoon instead - it came out a little overpowering in the aroma and flavor, perhaps because of the freshnes of my dried lavender. 

Chocolate gelato requires a step of incorporating unsweetened cocoa powder and melting milk chocolate prior to the tempering. This makes a thick, delicious chocolate milk which is then used to temper the eggs, then following the rest of the custard-base steps. Chocolate is by and large my favorite to make since you can dictate the severity of your sweetness (I would still use the sugar in the custard base if shooting for a dark chocolate gelato, rather than a milk chocolate gelato where i omit the refined sugar step) by choosing from countless brands of sweet milk chocolate. I’ve used cheap Hershey bars and expensive rain-forest supportive dark chocolate and never been disappointed with either. 

Step 3 - freezing the custard base using an ice cream maker

You can find an ice cream maker at a second hand store, borrow your neighbor’s that has been sitting unused in the top shelf of the closet, or try to get a fancy one through a marriage registry listing. Either way, you’ll want to research one best for your price range - I have a Kitchenaid stand mixer so I went with the attachment for about $75. 

Cuisinart brand ice cream maker seems very popular and even hard to find in some cases, but those range from about $70 for the basic to $250 for the one that has the freezer built in. If you’re not willing to pay +$200 then you’ll be freezing your ice cream bowl for 15 hours prior to the day you make and cool your custard base, which can be cumbersome by taking up space in the freezer as well as ensuring it’s cold enough to function correctly. I did see a Cuisinart ice cream maker at a thrift store for $20 so keep your eyes peeled for something like that. It’d be a steal, as long as it has all the pieces and the ice cream bowl still appears to have all it’s liquid-freezing agents locked in. 

The last part to ensuring you make a good ice cream is to work swiftly after the mixing to get the ice cream in an air-tight container and into a very cold freezer - I usually pack mine into the ice maker to make sure it’s as cold as can be. If it re-freezes too slow, you can get the rock-hard icy situation that I described with one of my failures. 

Sausage, Salami, Beer, Cheese, Hot Sauce, Pickles

Or, what I've been up to since 2015:

Intro

     I am still making beer (added 3 lbs of pureed mango to a hazy IPA today) but I have also grown up in other ways in the kitchen and I really want to write about them. Things like salami, cheese and other fermentables.
     When I started writing this blog in 2012, I was making beer a few times a month, or more. It slowed down considerably over the years culminating in 2019 when I think I only made one beer. In 2020 I have found some steam to go forward with more batches, namely to have an abundance of my favorite style. Right now it's fruit-infused hazy IPAs. I made a hazy IPA from More Beer but this time I used the same recipe and added mango. This is an attempt to hone in on some all-grain brewing skills I was lacking over the years. This will help with getting specific targets of mouthfeel, alcohol percentages and overall efficiency improvements in my homebrew process.

Beers

     As I mentioned, hazy IPAs are my new favorite, but I am also thinking of making a breakfast stout. If I were to make something big like that again (it was a chocolate stout I made in 2019) then I would also want a more "session-able" beer alongside it. In another point, as service to my fans, I want to get two going at the same time so I can prove I can do it with my kegerator. It seems some people commented on older posts asking to see pictures of it.
In truth, it is a little difficult to get the two kegs in there: I have one keg that is shorter and wider than my other two. This shorter keg is able to sit on the back step in my Sanyo kegerator - but it must be held in place by another full 5 gallon keg! I apparently never took a picture of it. But a project plan is to clean up that short keg and to get two beers going at once.

brew table

mango

Meats

     This is something new I picked up about a year ago, but it took a few large appliance purchases to get here: I started fermenting meats. I bought a used full fridge from Next Door for $150 and it was made in 2013 I think. This is key because you need a fridge that has good electricity standards and won't use tons of electricity (since you most likely already have a fridge at home, having a second fridge can be a big hit to your power bill). From Amazon, I bought a temperature regulator, a humidity regulator, a humidifier and a dehumidifier. I built a make-shift heating unit out of a lasagna tin and an old light bulb fixture.
     But I am getting ahead of myself. I feel the salami is the most exciting part of it, but it started with buying a KitchenAid stand-mixer, the stainless-steel meat grinder attachments, and quite shockingly, some natural hog casings from Amazon (I now source my hog casings from thesausagemaker.com as the quality and price cannot be beat for getting stuff sent to your home).  With that, I picked up some pork shoulder from Safeway and got to making sausages and smoking them. Once you get the method of slinging sausages, you can read up on all the other stuff you need to properly ferment the meat.
     I've also been making 3 lbs slabs of bacon but I am not quite good at it. I can do all the stuff to make it (bacon is stupid-easy to make, you just need a regular fridge and a method to smoke it) and the bacon tastes really good, but it isn't the same consistency as store-bought bacon - so I need to figure out what I'm missing there. I tend to find the flavors are concentrated in certain spots on the slab and not all slices of bacon are created equal. Pork belly slabs are one of the more expensive cuts of meat I've ventured to buy so I haven't really pinned this one down.
    I spent 4 months hang drying a pork shoulder in the fermentation chamber while salami came in and out. The cured pork shoulder is called a coppa or a gabagul and it mostly seems to just take patience. I tried using a collagen casing and it seems to work really well as the coppa came out delicious. Sometimes I fry it up and put it on a breakfast sandwich, but it's good to eat as-is, thinly sliced. I was gifted a meat slicer and it's very fun to use it to cut the coppa.

salami hanging

getting better

duck sausage

Italian pork sausage

first bacon smoke

fridge cured lonza (pork loin)

coppa initial cure

coppa after 4 months

Cheese

     Making mozzarella cheese is somewhat easy, the hardest part is just getting the swing of all the timed steps. After making mozz a few times, I sort of let that hobby go because the next steps were all about cultures, presses and ageing. After getting the fermentation chamber up for the salami, I was able to pick up cheese making again and I successfully pressed and aged a gallon of organic milk into white cheddar cheese. It was mostly a trial run (I just watched one YouTube video and the guy made it seem quite easy) but I was pleasantly shocked when I cut into the cheese to find it was not a black-mold pile of nasty. It was a sharp, hard, funky cheddar cheese that was pressed too hard.
     I decided to over-engineer a cheese press so that I could be sure I was pressing the cheese at the right weight. I followed an instructible which claimed an "easy cheese press" could be made but I found it lacking in a lot of details. I ended up with a functional press, it is calibrated for 25 and 50 lbs of pressure. I also bought a culture so that I can make Parmesan cheese (apparently it's all about the culture you use which is the main contributor to the flavor besides the milk).

old cheese press

very sharp cheddar

cheese press 2.0

Hot Sauce

     I love the show Hot Ones on YouTube and I think that's the reason I got into spicy sauces. Sometime later, Bon Appetite YouTube channel started putting Brad Leone on the spot more and one of his first videos was fermented hot sauce, sort of like siricha. After copying this recipe, what came out was a bright, floral tasting sauce with a bit of a funky kick. I started collecting hot sauces and now I have too many but they're good to keep me motivated. I've done some tasting with these but some of them are too hot if you use too much sauce.

scorpion peppers

dried and ground

Epilogue

I intend to continue writing blog posts as more of an instructional story. Sometimes I criticize the videos and blogs I've read to get me where I am, when I really should just produce those experiences myself and fill the gap that I feel is missing.


Thanks for reading!

Bonus pasta and pickles:

pickles

pasta

Coffee Chocolate Porter, Homemade Coffee, Mead

Starting a new job can be stressful but can also be fun. I can assure you that I have been having fun these past two years even though I haven't brewed beer nearly as often as I have in the past. The pictures in my past posts have all been at my parent's villa where I have a storage shed filled with my brewing equipment. My parents let me keep my stuff there, and in exchange I keep it organized, brew occasionally, and leave the beers hooked up to the kegerator for my dad to drink after a round of golf or some sweaty yardwork. My dad is my biggest fan, I don't think he has ever disliked any beer I made (and he has tried every one).
I can at least do an info-dump of a few projects that I worked on since November of 2012 (my last post) which includes beer, coffee and cooking.

Coffee and Coffee Porter Projects

Raw Rwanda Dukunde Kawa Musasa coffee beans

Roasting session

Roasted and fanned

Fresh brewed. Cooled after a short steep.

The coffee project was fun. I was able to make some beans and bring them into work for people to try, I also made a batch for a friend's birthday. But the pictures above (excluding the action shot of a roast) were intended for a Coffee Porter I made from the Jamil's Chocolate Porter recipe I have done before. Here are some of the working shots from that day

Cleaning the keg

The freshly brewed and cooled coffee was added to the sanitized keg.
The porter was racked directly on top

I get a kick out of sanitary foam displacement!

MaxfieldMead Bottling Wax

Mead was the first alcohol I learned to brew; it's easy and it used to be cheap. Honey prices have doubled at least since I started my first Mead project in an empty Smirnoff bottle with a hand-squeezed pomegranate and local Arcata blueberry honey. That was in 2005 when I was a dishwasher hoping to get good tips from the waiting staff so I could make more Mead.
In 2015 I have at least 10 bottles of aged meads I have crafted over the years and managed to store safely, in hopes they mellow out in flavor and clear up naturally. It works pretty well as I can always bring out for a special occasion or give one away as a gift.

Red on the left is real bottle wax from More Beer.
The others are crayon-glue mixtures

Old meets new. I've given a lot of these away

The wax is made from Crayola brand crayons and hot gue sticks from the 99cent store
Crayola were the best, they seem to have the most wax like consistency

A sticker and a clear label for a simple brand

Brewing and Building

(Coming Soon)
Here are some randos of exploits in the past year.

Hefeweizen and Chocolate Porter

I checked the calendar and discovered that I hadn't brewed since mid-September. That means it had been almost two months since my equipment had been used! Saturday morning started out with a thorough cleaning of a wide range of equipment. 

On Saturday 11/10/2012, I brewed a German Hefeweizen using Hefeweizen IV yeast. This will be the third time I've brewed this recipe (but I believe only the second time using this yeast). On Sunday 11/11/2012 I tackled a recipe called Jamil’s Chocolate Hazelnut Porter which I have brewed on one other occasion. I’ll be replacing the Hazelnut with Dark Cherries. I also boiled the 2 gallons of runoffs from the end of the mash on both brews. I boiled that Sunday night without hops and threw in an unlabeled (probably CA Ale) yeast. So that’s a total of three new things fermenting. Woo!

2nd Gen Irish ale starter

Since the brew store didn't open until 10 AM, I organized a bunch of stuff and went and got my automobile Smog checked for California Certification. Passing a test first thing in the morning is a great way to start your day.

German Hefeweizen IV
A very simple grain bill of 6 lbs Wheat and 4 lbs pale malt with one hops addition of Northern Brewer makes this simple beer one of the best bang-for-buck. I added 8 oz of carapils and decided on a non-traditional yeast for this style (I guess the Hefe IV is commonly used for a style called Roggenbier). However, with the addition of the carapils and this yeast, I feel this wheat beer comes out very unique. I remember it being creamy and aromatic, light but highly flavorful with a mouthfeel like that of a creamy stout.

Saturday was a very cold day and I made the mistake of using my notes from 2 month ago in order to reach mash temperatures. The mash dropped from 154°F to 150°F in 15 minutes, so I moved it into the sun and it remained at 150°F for the rest of the 45 minutes. This isn't that bad, in fact, it makes for a drier fermentation which would be great for the wheat beer. The sparge lasted about 20 minutes and I drained 6.5 gallons in the kettle. From that, I ended up with almost a gallon of smallbeer from the end of the mash tun at OG 1.025. I put that in a bucket and saved it. However, after boiling the main wort for an hour, I was left with 4.75 gallons which was well under my target volume. This happens to me time and time again, so I made sure it didn't happen when I brewed the next day.

  

Jamil’s Chocolate Hazelnut Porter

This all-grain kit costs twice as much as the Hefe kit, but I am not making this beer to save money: this chocolate porter is my favorite that I have brewed. But this beer was a very different beast than the wheat beer I brewed the day previous. The biggest difference between the two beers was the amount of grain, which caused a few bumps in the road.

The first problem I had was heating my mash water (yes, this was within the first 20 minutes of the day). With a mash thickness of 1.5q H2O per pound of grain, the Choco Porter calls for 5.7 gallons of H2O. Well, my HLT can only hold 5 gallons exactly. So I had to heat my mash water in two parts, in lieu of going with a thicker mash. I heated 5 gallons to 180°F, transferred 4 gallons of it to my Mash Tun, and then proceeded to heat up about 3 more gallons to 180°F (I chose such a high strike temperature because of my issues with unexpected drop the day before). It really wasn't much of a setback because I started so early that day. I had almost 6 gallons of 175°F H2O in my tun by 9:30 AM. The reason I have detailed this is because, in the past, I have simply used the 5 gallons and didn't heat up extra water. This presents a thicker mash, which isn't so bad, but there are certain aspects of the conversion which are better done with a thin mash. I don't know the details, but many homebrewers that I have talked with use the 1.5q per pound ratio. The MoreFlavor Inc. all-grain brewing instruction explains that, as a basic rule, you use 1.1q per pound. 

At one point during the mash, my digital thermometer started acting wacky. The temperature started to go up! I checked the analog thermometer I had in there (I always throw one in the mash for emergencies I guess) and sure enough, it was reporting in the low-to-mid-50s while the digital thermometer was at 165°F. I used the analog thermometer for the rest of the brew. I guess after two days of being used at high temperatures, it sort of wonked-out. This happened one other time to me and I almost threw the digital thermometer away. Good thing I didn’t because it worked fine the next day.

Sparging, I dealt with HLT volume problem again but I was prepared. I heated 5 gallons to 174°F and did a vorlauf of about ¾ of a gallon. I ran the sparge until there was a little more than a gallon of hot water remaining in my HLT (about 10 min), then I closed the valves on the Mash and the HLT. I filled the HLT back up to about 4 gallons and turned the heat way up to get the new water to the 170s. My mash only rested like this for about 10 minutes before the water was hot enough and I finished off the Sparge (another 10 min). I sparged until I had 7 gallons of wort. This left me with a gallon of extra wort at a low 1.025OG. I added this to the Hefe runoffs and stashed it for later.

After cooling, I hooked up the oxygen for a while then pitched my 2^nd generation Irish Ale yeast starter. A couple days later, the krausen as risen and fallen and the beer is looking great.

The Little Things

On Sunday evening, my girlfriend and I sat by the heat of my small Bayou burner and boiled up the 2 gallons of 'small beer' wort we had gathered for the two days prior. We didn't use any hops and did a shortened 45 minute boil. We lost a good half gallon in volume. We pitched a mason jar of yeast (we didn't decant any of the liquid) that I had in my fridge. It wasn't labeled so I am going to venture a guess that it's about 3 month old 4th generation CA Ale yeast which may have been gathered from a blow-off. I plan to blend it with the 2 gallons of pale ale that I accidently froze and give it to a friend who has a still for a distillation run.

Kegerator Project

I haven’t actually brewed beer in about a month (although I have made some wine!) because I have been dedicating any free time to the construction of a two-tap tower mini-fridge kegerator conversion. With help from homebrewtalk and /r/homebrewing I have recently completed this easy project and stepped up my game with style and class.

The Fridge

I purchased a Sanyo SR-4433s mini-fridge from a nearby dude on craig’s list. Smaller ones like it are for sale on Amazon.com for $579 but I was fortunate enough to talk the guy down to $110 bucks. I was told the fridge had been used for 3 months before the company who bought it closed down and sold a few fridges like it. It fit perfectly standing up in the back of my girlfriend's Honda Fit. Expensive for a mini-fridge, but it's energy efficient and sleek looking.

It’s a 4.4 cubic ft. model with a cold plate for making ice cubes at the top. There is a shelving unit on the door which holds on the rubber fridge seal. Looking into the fridge, it’s hard to imagine fitting two kegs in there but I have done it. A quick rundown of what will be done: door shelf removed, all inner shelving removed, temp controller unmounted, cold-plate bent 90° down, two holes in the side for gas lines, a hole and a tap-tower bolted to the roof.

The Door Mod

Removing the door was easy. It’s actually made to switch to the other side if you want it to swing open the other way. I removed all the screws holding it in (probably about 20 screws total) and slid the rubber seal off of the plastic shelving unit. I kept the shelving unit in tact so that I could trace it when making a replacement board. I started with a piece of plexiglass, hoping to cut it into shape and drill some holes for the screws. It did not go very well: tutorials on the internet said to score it and break it but my immediate family said it would splinter that way and to try and cut it. I decided to use an electrical hand saw and basically destroyed the piece of plexiglass. It had rigid edges all the way around and even broke some shards off large enough to destroy the screw hole areas. Plexiglass would be ideal because it wouldn't rot or warp in the cold temperatures of the fridge. I settled with some laminated particle board. I painted the board with some primer and I reinforced the edges where the seal and the board met by laying down some weather stripping. The door shut fine and the seal isstrong.

Priming the shelf replacement

Tracing the particleboard. It was
much easier to cut and drill
than the plexiglass, although,
 not ideal inner-fridge material.

Seal affixed with the assistance of
weather resistant weatherstripping.

The Inner Mods

The next step was modifying the inside of the fridge so that two kegs would be able to fit in there. Because of the design of the cooling unit on this Sanyo, I could only ever find a confirmation that two of the tall, narrow Pin Lock style kegs would fit. I went ahead with the modifications to see how much room I could get in there. First, I un-mounted the thermostat by removing the screw and unhooked it from the wall of the fridge; pretty simple once I got in there with a flashlight and could see where the one screw held it together. The scary part of the fridge mod was the bending of the cooling plate. To do this, you first allow the fridge to come to normal temperatures by having it unplugged for a day. Then, you just bend it down! There are two plastic pins holding the cold plate to the back of the fridge. The tutorial I read just left them there, so the bending fulcrum point was on these two pins. As a pure accident, I didn’t read that part, so I removed the pins then focused on bending the plate down where it was connected by the (covered) copper tubing. This is the main line that the coolant flows into the cold plate, so I was very scared of breaking it. But it all went rather well and I was able to bend the whole plate down, then I bent the shelved part that was previously held up by the pins. I highly suggest leaving it pinned in there and bending it that way. I’m unable to re-pin the cold plate, but so far this has not caused any problems.

The Gas Holes

Inside

For the gas line holes, I stuck my electric drill as far back and up as I could on the right side of the fridge. I used a normal drill bit and punched through the thin plastic, foam insulation and thin metal sheet on the outside. Once that hole was in there, I used a step drill bit until the hole could fit my gas lines. Once the step bit had made the proper sized holes in the plastic and metal, I used the normal bit again to clear out the foam, using unsafe methods of pumping the drill back and forth like a saw. Make sure there are no burrs in your hole to get the gas line caught when feeding it in, you can file them down once you’re finished. Once the first hole was in, I decided on placement for the second hole by measuring appropriate room for two lines on the outside of the fridge, then drilling from the outside this time. The inner hole was placed perfectly next to the first hole. The reason this “measure never, cut once” method worked was because of the fridge’s design: there are no cooling coils in the top corners of the side panels. Furthermore, the bulkiness of my hand drill determined the location of the first hole which gave me plenty of room for the second, it being closer to the back of the fridge. 

Outside

The Tower Hole

Creating a hole and support for the two-tap tower was the most involved process of the project. But still, it was easy and online tutorials guided me the whole way. I had to purchase a hole-cutter drill bit, but in hindsight, this was not necessary. Some elbow grease with a utility knife could have achieved the same effect. 

Foam is about 3 inches thick

1. Find the appropriate center/positioning on the fridge’s top and drill a small, shallow hole.

2. Remove the plastic top of the fridge. Use gentle force.
3. Remove insulation foam from around the shallow hole until the thin plastic roof is exposed.

4. Use the hole-cutter and cut a hole into the fridge’s thin roof.

5. Line the roof hole with aluminum temperature resistant tape.

6. Use the hole-cutter and cut a hole into the plastic top of the fridge you removed.

7. Use a utility knife and remove the ridges on the underside of the plastic top of the fridge.

8. Tower Stability needs:

a. Locate an 8x8x¾” piece of wood.

b. Using the hole cutter, cut a hole in the 8x8 piece of wood.

c. Cover the wood in aluminum temperature resistant tape

d. Locate 3 pieces of 8x8x¼” foam

9. Trace the shape of the 8x8 wood into the foam insulation on the fridge, and then use a utility knife to remove all of the foam all the way down to the thin roof of the fridge. Ensure your 8x8 wood fits snug.

10. Line up all your pieces (tower, wood, 2 pieces of the foam, fridge top) and position your tower.

11. Use a pen to mark the four spots that your tower’s bolts are to be placed.

12. If your wood is snug enough, drill your holes right through plastic, foam sheets, wood, plastic roof. Otherwise, carefully mark the intended locations of bolt holes and drill separately.

13. Once the holes are set, get your final sheet of foam in there. You’ll want to compress this piece with the bolts, but make sure not to press down too hard on the fridge top to squish it. Only use the bolt tightening pressure. You don’t want to cave in the roof of your fridge!  

14. Once the bolts are in and the nuts are tightened, use a dremmel tool to cut the extra bolt lengths off.

15. Put the freakin’ door back on finally.

And that’s it! You now have a kegerator. The issues I have found with this model are all fixed with the above steps, except the final issue of a consistent temperature. For that, I purchased a temperature regulation unit that plugs directly into the fridge. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about Sanyo Fridge Conversions. I've only done it once, so I will give you the best advice I can! Cheers!

Here is a closeup of my rugged custom tap handles. Assembled from firewood, bark, rebar tie wire and nails then painted with chalkboard paint.

Pressing 29 lbs. of Merlot

Links:

my reddit post

homebrewtalk post about this Sanyo

Two-Tap Tower

Temp Regulation Unit

Hole-Cutter Drill Bits