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  • Need Advice for Custom Cold Room

    We are in the early stages of planning out the layout of our brewpub. We plan on using a large cold room to keep 6 3bbl single-walled brite tanks cold. I was hoping to build a custom cold room located behind the bar. The original idea was to have windows on the front side so customers could see the tanks. I didn't want the cold room to look like a typical walk-in cooler (i.e. a box with a cooling unit on top). I wanted it to be an actual room with walls that go all the way up to the ceiling (about 9-10 ft.). I also wanted to install a sliding glass door.

    I stumbled across an opportunity to purchase a used cold room with a compressor and condenser that are only 2 years old. The cold room is 12'x16'x8' high. He's only asking $5,000 for it, which sounds like a great deal. The only problem is, we planned on building a custom cold room (one that actually looks like a room, not a walk-in cooler).

    Should I buy the cold room and use the parts to build our cold room? Should I ask if I can just buy the compressor and condenser? Will we be able to use any of the other parts when we build ours? I would hate to pass up such a good deal if we could end up using some of the stuff for our "custom" cold room.

    Thanks for the advice and sorry if this is confusing.
    Neil Chabut
    Eudora Brewing Co.
    Brewery and BOP
    Kettering, OH

  • #2
    Have you considered using a Coolbot?

    Kevin Shertz
    Chester River Brewing Company
    Chestertown, MD

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by ChesterBrew
      Have you considered using a Coolbot?

      http://www.storeitcold.com
      Wow! I had never heard of this before. Looks like it may be a viable option. I will do some more research and see if I can find out more. Thanks!
      Neil Chabut
      Eudora Brewing Co.
      Brewery and BOP
      Kettering, OH

      Comment


      • #4
        you can buy the walk in, and then put wood or whatever on the outside to make it look like a regular room. That is what we did at our brewpub. The walk in was 8 ft high, but we put wood on the front and a parapet on top so it the back bar looked 12 ft high.
        Don't know about the coolbot, but most home A/C units are not built to run 24/7. Seems like you will be going through a lot of units.
        Also having tanks in the cold room puts a strain on the cooling equipment, with hot cleaning, humidity, and the warmer beer pumped into the serving tanks.
        Mike Lanzarotta
        Commercial Real Estate Broker
        finding space for breweries in Southern California
        former owner and brewer, Crown City Brewery, Pasadena CA

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Fullcourt
          you can buy the walk in, and then put wood or whatever on the outside to make it look like a regular room. That is what we did at our brewpub. The walk in was 8 ft high, but we put wood on the front and a parapet on top so it the back bar looked 12 ft high.
          Don't know about the coolbot, but most home A/C units are not built to run 24/7. Seems like you will be going through a lot of units.
          Also having tanks in the cold room puts a strain on the cooling equipment, with hot cleaning, humidity, and the warmer beer pumped into the serving tanks.
          That's a good point. I may contact someone at CoolBot and see what they have to say. Building around the cold room isn't a bad idea I suppose. Although I wish there was a way to make the actual cold room ceiling higher. Do you think 8 feet leaves enough room for brite tanks that are about 5 feet tall?
          Neil Chabut
          Eudora Brewing Co.
          Brewery and BOP
          Kettering, OH

          Comment


          • #6
            We have three 3 BBL brite tanks in our cold room, as well as our kegs. We use the CoolBot and a single LG Electronics AC unit (18,000 BTU). The fan on the A/C runs 24/7 but the chilling part rarely kicks on. Our electric bill is less than our home electric bill. I think we are around $130 a month average. We chill down to 40*F.

            We cold crash in the fermenters to around 40*F and transfer in about that temp so there is little "stress" on the system. We do not notice much of a difference in hot cleaning, but with small 3 bbl tanks it doesn't take much to get them clean.

            Our AC unit has not frozen up on us once, nor does it seem like it is slowing down at all. Again the fan, which circulates the cold air, runs all the time. Not a big deal. For about $600 we are completely happy with the decision to go this route. $300 for the Cool Bot, and $300 for the AC unit.

            Let me know if you have any questions

            Aaron
            Cambria Beer Company

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Cambria Beer Co
              We have three 3 BBL brite tanks in our cold room, as well as our kegs. We use the CoolBot and a single LG Electronics AC unit (18,000 BTU). The fan on the A/C runs 24/7 but the chilling part rarely kicks on. Our electric bill is less than our home electric bill. I think we are around $130 a month average. We chill down to 40*F.

              We cold crash in the fermenters to around 40*F and transfer in about that temp so there is little "stress" on the system. We do not notice much of a difference in hot cleaning, but with small 3 bbl tanks it doesn't take much to get them clean.

              Our AC unit has not frozen up on us once, nor does it seem like it is slowing down at all. Again the fan, which circulates the cold air, runs all the time. Not a big deal. For about $600 we are completely happy with the decision to go this route. $300 for the Cool Bot, and $300 for the AC unit.

              Let me know if you have any questions

              Aaron
              Cambria Beer Company
              Thanks, Aaron. Approximately how big is your cold room? Do you have any type of floor insulation?
              Neil Chabut
              Eudora Brewing Co.
              Brewery and BOP
              Kettering, OH

              Comment


              • #8
                Our room is really small, about 100 sq feet. Too small but we are expanding with platforms to raise the tanks off the ground and store kegs below.

                We went with concrete slab floor (pre-existing) and regular insulation in the walls. We then put 3 inch rigid foam insulation with FRP board covering the walls.

                Read all you can on the cool bot website. Some good info on there.

                hope this helps

                Aaron

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Cambria Beer Co
                  Our room is really small, about 100 sq feet. Too small but we are expanding with platforms to raise the tanks off the ground and store kegs below.

                  We went with concrete slab floor (pre-existing) and regular insulation in the walls. We then put 3 inch rigid foam insulation with FRP board covering the walls.

                  Read all you can on the cool bot website. Some good info on there.

                  hope this helps

                  Aaron
                  Thanks for the advice, Aaron. Our cold room will probably end up being between 225 and 300 square feet, so we'll need a bit more cooling power (that, or the cooling unit will be running a lot more than yours).
                  Neil Chabut
                  Eudora Brewing Co.
                  Brewery and BOP
                  Kettering, OH

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    My room goes up this week. It is about 700sqft and about 13feet tall and I am going to use 3 split 24,000BTU AC units controlled by coolbots. Not only am I saving a ton of money on the system and about 40% on electricty, but I like the redundancy of having 3 units instead of a single cold room unit. I ran the numbers and my room needs about 15k BTUs to achieve the desired 40degrees. I will have a total of 72k BTUs so the compressors should only be running a quarter of the time or less which is essential when using a coolbot to keep the evaporator fins from freezing. I think a coolbot/AC application is ideal for a brewery inventory storage cold room since the beer comes in at or below the cold room temperatrue and thus you don't need the huge evaporator fans of traditional cold room units (since you are just maintaining temps inside the room not taking out heat from warm product). In a few weeks I should be able to tell you guys how my installation went.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by dfalken
                      My room goes up this week. It is about 700sqft and about 13feet tall and I am going to use 3 split 24,000BTU AC units controlled by coolbots. Not only am I saving a ton of money on the system and about 40% on electricty, but I like the redundancy of having 3 units instead of a single cold room unit. I ran the numbers and my room needs about 15k BTUs to achieve the desired 40degrees. I will have a total of 72k BTUs so the compressors should only be running a quarter of the time or less which is essential when using a coolbot to keep the evaporator fins from freezing. I think a coolbot/AC application is ideal for a brewery inventory storage cold room since the beer comes in at or below the cold room temperatrue and thus you don't need the huge evaporator fans of traditional cold room units (since you are just maintaining temps inside the room not taking out heat from warm product). In a few weeks I should be able to tell you guys how my installation went.
                      Sounds pretty awesome. How did you figure out how many BTU's you'll need? Is there a formula or something?
                      Neil Chabut
                      Eudora Brewing Co.
                      Brewery and BOP
                      Kettering, OH

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by NigeltheBold
                        Sounds pretty awesome. How did you figure out how many BTU's you'll need? Is there a formula or something?
                        If you have not already, check out http://storeitcold.com. The answers you seek are out there on the site.

                        6' x 8' 10,000 BTU
                        8' x 8' 12,000 BTU
                        8' x 10' 15,000 BTU
                        8' x 12' 18,000 BTU
                        10' x 12' 21,000 BTU
                        10' x 14' 24,000 BTU
                        (Air-conditioner vs. room size for CoolBot Systems @ 38F)

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by NigeltheBold
                          Sounds pretty awesome. How did you figure out how many BTU's you'll need? Is there a formula or something?

                          There are calculators for this sort of thing. Usually you have to purchase them but I found one that gives you a couple of free uses before you have to pay. Look for "cold room calculator" on google. There are several factors that you need to take into account when calculating your BTU needs...

                          r value of your insulation
                          total surface area of your room (heat exchange areas)
                          differential in temp between inside and outside
                          times you will open the door per "x" amount of time
                          heat generating sources inside the room (humans, light fixtures, motors, forklift, etc)
                          thermal mass of product you will be storing in the room
                          speed at which you would like the product to reach maintenance temp

                          Traditional cooling units have large evaporator fans to keep the evaporator fins from freezing and to accelerate the heat exchange between the stored product and the surrounding air. In a brewery the beer for storage will normally go into the cold room at or below the storage temp so you don't need the large fans as you don't need to remove heat from the product. The coolbot keeps the fins from freezing by controlling the compressor and shutting it down when the fins approach freezing temps. Consequently you need excess cooling capacity (BTUs) so that the compressor(s) don't run all the time. Storeitcold recommends at least double the required capacity but you are much better served going substantially higher than that so that your AC units are not overworked since they aren't build for continuous duty

                          In the case of my room with 3 x 24k BTU units, one of these units could go down and I would still have 48k BTUs of cooling power which is still 3 times the amount of cooling power I actually need. I can take the unit off line and fix it or replace it without affecting my operation. AC units are relatively cheap so going with excess capacity is reasonable. In theory it works great, I'll let you know how it works in real life in a few weeks.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Cambria Beer Co
                            If you have not already, check out http://storeitcold.com. The answers you seek are out there on the site.

                            6' x 8' 10,000 BTU
                            8' x 8' 12,000 BTU
                            8' x 10' 15,000 BTU
                            8' x 12' 18,000 BTU
                            10' x 12' 21,000 BTU
                            10' x 14' 24,000 BTU
                            (Air-conditioner vs. room size for CoolBot Systems @ 38F)
                            Those are just rough approximations and you can't use those numbers for larger rooms. I actually worked out my number while speaking to the owner of storeitcold. The numbers they give you already include excess capacity so that their controllers work well but if your room is bigger than the rooms they show, the relationship is not linear.

                            My room is 25' x 27' x 13'H and the actual cooling need of the room for storage of beer (coming in at or below the room's temp) with something like 5 door openings a day is only about 15k BTUs. Storeitcold's numbers will work well if your room size matches one of their sizes shown as they are allowing for substantial extra cooling capacity. If your room is bigger do your own homework.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by dfalken
                              Those are just rough approximations and you can't use those numbers for larger rooms. I actually worked out my number while speaking to the owner of storeitcold. The numbers they give you already include excess capacity so that their controllers work well but if your room is bigger than the rooms they show, the relationship is not linear.

                              My room is 25' x 27' x 13'H and the actual cooling need of the room for storage of beer (coming in at or below the room's temp) with something like 5 door openings a day is only about 15k BTUs. Storeitcold's numbers will work well if your room size matches one of their sizes shown as they are allowing for substantial extra cooling capacity. If your room is bigger do your own homework.
                              Sounds like it would be wise to talk to somebody from Storeitcold. Where did you find the split-type air conditioners? What brand are you using and where are you buying from? I like the look of the split-type air conditioners, but it's hard to find them online.

                              Thanks for the help!
                              Neil Chabut
                              Eudora Brewing Co.
                              Brewery and BOP
                              Kettering, OH

                              Comment

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