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cellarstream, who's using them?

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  • cellarstream, who's using them?

    We've been getting sick of the time consuming process of nitro'ing kegs of beer by shaking them, we are thinking about getting a cellarstream for our taproom to take the fuss out of nitro beers. is anyone using them on here? are they worth it? reliable?
    the other thing i can think of is injecting nitrogen through our stone, but with 15 psi max pressure in a tank does the nitro stay in the product till kegging and serving?

    thanks
    Dan

  • #2
    Dan,

    I don't personally have one, but I know a few brewers that do (that usually don't post here) From what I've seen and heard they're super easy to use and reliable. Everyone seems to love theirs as it makes the beer much easier to deal with and gives very consistent pours. I haven't heard any complaints about maintenance, or other hassles, other than the price.
    Manuel

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    • #3
      Thanks Manuel!

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      • #4
        Love it.

        We have a Cellarstream2 and it's a dream to use. Flat or CO2 kegs go on, perfect single-pour nitro comes out. You can adjust your gas mix and membrane pressure to dial in exactly how much head you want. Super sweet and well worth it.
        Mike Elliott
        Head Brewer
        Philipsburg Brewing Co.
        Montana

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        • #5
          We have 4 Cellarstreams and 4 Cellarstream II's

          The regular cellarstreams are great.

          The cellarstream II's are beyond horrible. They constantly blow foam out the co2 vent ports creating a huge amount of waste and mess. Spoke to Charlie at AC Beverage about it and after many phone calls and sending him videos, he finally agreed to replace them one at a time. After we swapped out the first one, they claimed we weren't cleaning it. We ran 3 separate cleaning cycles and the problem persisted with all 4 machines. Charlie stopped answering my phone calls and went back on our deal to replace our units. STAY AWAY from the cellar stream II's

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          • #6
            Its how you use them...

            We have 2 CellarStream IIs.

            We have had countless issues with them. Lots of phone calls with Charlie as well. Finally after months of failed troubleshooting via phone and email, we had to have an AC Bev rep come out and take a look at our setup and operation.

            He was in the cooler for a few hours. Completely re-did all the plumbing and gas lines, even rotated the units 90deg so the membranes were vertical and not horizontal. He added more fittings so we could "flush" our setup out every night with water, and let the membranes dry out. This seemed to help for about 3 weeks. Now they puke foam and fill the drip bottles very fast.

            What I do know is this, if you can FILTER your beer prior to feeding it to your cellarstreamII, you will save yourself quite a bit of headache. We do not currently filter. We have been getting better over the past 3 years with finished beer clarity, but per the rep, any yeast or sediment that gets into the membranes will wreak havoc on operation. They love clean/filtered beer.

            Edit: Would also highly recommend feeding them cellarstreamII FLAT beer vs carbonated. Seems like we have had most issues with "degassing" carbonated beers; a feature which isn't even mentioned anymore in product brochure as far as I can tell. Seems like claims of performance/capability were initially made, and then backed off from.
            Last edited by jscottAT4; 05-17-2017, 08:31 AM. Reason: more info.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Mike Elliott View Post
              We have a Cellarstream2 and it's a dream to use. Flat or CO2 kegs go on, perfect single-pour nitro comes out. You can adjust your gas mix and membrane pressure to dial in exactly how much head you want. Super sweet and well worth it.
              Interesting to hear after seeing the above two posts.

              Are you filtering your beer? I was thinking about getting one but am now on the fence.

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              • #8
                If you get one, go with CellarStream I over II

                I said earlier that I couldn't find the degas information in CellarstreamII info. Well, CellarstreamII doesn't even show up on AC beverage's website.

                Based on that and the recommendation to feed it flat beer, I would just go with the cellarstream I and use flat beer. By far our biggest issues were with degassing the beer.

                For any CellarStreamII users having issues, I have a really good PDF a local field rep sent us after he worked on our 2 systems all day. It is almost 1.5mb so I am unable to upload/attach to this, so if you're interested I can email it to you.

                I would also advise requesting on-site/in-person troubleshooting if phone/email/multimedia troubleshooting has yielded no results, but I had to be persistent with this to finally be put in touch with our local rep. Once he came in and worked on the system and provided the instructions, we had much better operation. Recent issues are due to taproom staff deviating from these instructions for nightly flushing.

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