Chiller for draft lines too?

[Rooh]

Is anybody using their glycol loop to chill their draft lines as well? I am thinking of setting up an outdoor bar about 35 feet from our cooler, trying to weigh the merits of glycol off existing loop, a small draft line chiller, and a 5 keg kegerator. Any advice or feedback is much appreciated.

Cheers,
Rich DeLano
rich@thebrewinglair.com

[Starcat]

Separate Systems are necessary

Your temperature for your serving system needs to be " consistent " and not subject to the wide swings that the brewery load generates.
AS thus, the correct way is to always have a stand alone system for serving.
Then what you can do is have the loop piped in strictly for backup in the case your line chiller fails with Tees and Valves.
Then you have " some " redundancy rather than zero under that condition.

[TGTimm]

We run a 75', 8 product beer trunk to an outside serving kiosk. The lines and serving tower are chilled by a small Banner chiller unit near the walk-in cooler where the kegs reside. I don't recall the size of the chiller right now, but it's one of the smaller ones Banner sells. With outside temps in the high 90*s to low 100*s, we have no trouble keeping the beer at our desired 45*. During the winter, when our temps often dip below zero (F), we turn the chiller off and run the glycol pump to keep anything from freezing in the (blown-down) lines and taps.

Starcat is absolutely right about not using your brewery glycol system. The little line chiller is a cheap investment.

[claponsie]

Is anybody using their glycol loop to chill their draft lines as well? I am thinking of setting up an outdoor bar about 35 feet from our cooler, trying to weigh the merits of glycol off existing loop, a small draft line chiller, and a 5 keg kegerator. Any advice or feedback is much appreciated.

Cheers,
Rich DeLano
rich@thebrewinglair.com

We use our beer line chiller to chill about 25' of trunk line as well as 3 3bbl fermenters and a 1bbl fermenter. The fermenters are all retrofitted with internal cooling coils. When all of the fermenters are going at the same time, or when we are crash cooling a beer, the beer pours warmer. When the beer pours warmer, it creates a TON more foam. Additionally, we have to explain to customers sometimes why our beer temperature fluctuates. It never gets warmer than 40 degrees or so, but customers notice. We try to only crash cool at night and on days we aren't open. It's a royal pain in the ass. I'm in the market for a second chiller .

[TheCarolinian]

I trained at a large production brewery that used a chest freezer to hold a container of glycol and ran the glycol lines from there to the draft lines in the walk in next to it. This kept the glycol for the draft system at a constant temp, separate from the glycol lines used for fermenters in the rest of the place. It seemed like a simple solution. This guy has been in business for a while, so I'm assuming it works.

[TGTimm]

The wheel works just fine, thank you.

http://www.bannerbeer.com/glycol-system-components-c-311.html

This is the equipment you need to do a long-run system right. No old ice boxes, no varying beer temps, just good pours all the time.

Throw in some Flo-jet beer pumps and you're good to go.

[wlw33]

we did the cheapest thing possible. we have 4, 25 ft lines coming from our walk-in to the serving taps. we insulated the hell out of the beer lines. we put a 5gal home brew bucket full of water into the walk-in and run a small, cheap pond pump from the bucket, up into the insulated beer lines (weaving in and out of all of them) and then back to the bucket. during the winter we have very cold beer. during the summer it actually still stays pretty cool, provided that we periodically add ice and freezer packs into the bucket. i was skeptical when we started putting it together but have been pleasantly surprised at its efficacy

[claponsie]

I trained at a large production brewery that used a chest freezer to hold a container of glycol and ran the glycol lines from there to the draft lines in the walk in next to it. This kept the glycol for the draft system at a constant temp, separate from the glycol lines used for fermenters in the rest of the place. It seemed like a simple solution. This guy has been in business for a while, so I'm assuming it works.

I've seen similar setups utilizing an igloo cooler and hacked apart air conditioner. These setups seem to work fine. If you can afford a used glycol chiller for the beer lines, that is the way to go. Typically, I see them used for $500 to $1000.