Sizing a walk in cooler/cold room

[Zawlard]

When you need a cold room/walk in cooler for taproom service how do you go about sizing? Is there any thought about sq/ft per tap handle or what considerations should be kept in mind? Thanks for your help. Z

[TheCarolinian]

I go the same question. I though I would search before I posted. Any luck figuring this out?

[Starcat]

Some Considerations

When you need a cold room/walk in cooler for taproom service how do you go about sizing? Is there any thought about sq/ft per tap handle or what considerations should be kept in mind? Thanks for your help. Z

You need to consider these points:
Is that cooler also your only storage area for kegs?
When you keg out your beer, you would typically want to empty your brite tank at that point so it can be flipped again.
How many kegs, how many flavors and so forth. All of that takes up refrigerated space that can be estimated.
You can get by with smaller draft system walk in if you have another larger one for storage. That strategy has advantage as you will not have the door open as often.

[troybinso]

I am wondering the same thing.

Imagine a three bbl brewery. That is six 1/2 bbl kegs per batch. If you have 8 taps you are looking at (48) 1/2 bbl kegs if all of the taps have six kegs available. Let's assume the following: You have two kegs lined up behind each tap - one tapped, one ready to be switched out. With a diameter of the keg being about 17in you are using up a space 17x 34 inches, times 8. This is about (3x12) 36sq ft.

In a different part of the cold room you have the rest of the kegs stacked 2 high, and 2 deep. This would also take up (3x12) 36 sq ft. So right off the bat you need 72 sq ft.

I would imagine there would be miscellaneous kegs that are waiting to be used for some other purpose, or for when you switch out a tap line, have a seasonal, etc. Lets call that (3x6) 18 more? That's another 18 sq ft. Putting us at 90 sq ft total.

Maybe there are a couple of 3bbl brite tanks in there. With a diameter of approximately 3 feet they would take up a space (3x6) 18sq ft to get to 108 sq ft.

Now you have to be able to walk around in there, maneuver kegs with a hand truck, not sure how much space this takes. Maybe a 3 ft aisle (3x12=36) between the brites and storage kegs on the sides of the walk in and another 3 ft (3x12=36) aisle behind the kegs on tap. The aisles make a "T"? This puts it at 180 sq ft. If the walk-in is 12x15 (180sq ft.), that should allow barely enough room to get around but doesn't allow for some extra space for miscellaneous stuff. Maybe 12x20 (240sq ft.) makes a little more sense.

I am just working this out in my head right now, so hopefully someone with some real experience can give a sanity check.

[Scott M]

You have to have space to store your hops as well. Perhaps an old keg or two of BLC. Perhaps planning for transitioning from kegs to serving tanks, brewery expansion to say a 7BBL or 10 BBL system, increased local distribution = more kegs, fork lift or pallet jack accessibility, additional taps, etc.

So for me, once you reach a size requirement and layout for your cold room, consider adding some fudge space. Where 12X20 (240 sq. ft.) may meet your current requirements, down the road you may have to add a second cold room or totally replace the small one you have when you could have easily installed a 20X40 (800 sq. ft.), or larger; cold room in the first place.