2 Tap Jockey Box

[timmi9191]

Just Ice no slurry is a mixture of ice and air. Air has a far worse heat transfer coefficient than water, so slurry and ice is better than ice alone from a simplistic glance at the issue point of view.

Where it gets complex is at what temp is the water? If it's near zero like the ice and added that's the best, but likely it's tap water so chilling it down will rob you of some of the thermal transfer the ice could have provided for the beer. So ratios and volume of water/air/ice/esky size /plate size etc all come into play so technically none of you could actually state with hand on heart what method is best as everyone would approach it differently with different temp water addition.

I'm sure either method you pick with require some form of TLC over the dispensing period Crusty, enjoy [emoji3]

Just ice and then pour beer, the hx melts ice to water. The water is the resultantant hx. Remove water = remove heat diff from beer to ice. Which is exactly what you want. If the water remained on a koolgardie safe it wouldnt work, the evaporation removes it. Same principle. Really simple..

 

[Crusty]

Thanks guys for the input & some difference of opinion. I can see that an ice slurry would be more practical with the coil but the plate works in a different way.
The concept is pretty basic really. Warm beer entering the plate melts the ice so obviously the ice will lose it's cooling capacity & it needs to be removed from the esky. If not, the plate warms to an undesirable temperature which in turn will cause foaming issues at the tap. Replenishing the ice as needed removes the foaming issue & keeps the plate at near zero temperature as long as ice is in contact with the plate. The coil would most certainly benefit from the slurry for several reasons, one of which is coil length. The warm beer entering via the top runs to the bottom of the coil where it's the coldest before going to the tap. Ice will need to be replenished as it melts to keep the slurry at an optimal consistency.
I think I'm with timmi on this one & it's the recommendation from the supplier & or manufacturer. I could of course be wrong & I appreciate your comments & opinion & am open to more debate.
Thanks guys.

 

[DJ_L3ThAL]

Just ice and then pour beer, the hx melts ice to water. The water is the resultantant hx. Remove water = remove heat diff from beer to ice. Which is exactly what you want. If the water remained on a koolgardie safe it wouldnt work, the evaporation removes it. Same principle. Really simple..

Was not disputing that putting just ice in wouldn't cool the beer. Please reread my post.

Sadly you're incorrect, the evaporation effect here would be extremely negligible towards the effect of cooling the beer. You are correct in a sense that latent heat transfer yields the most efficient amount of heat transfer. But in this case it is the waters phase change from a solid (ice) to a liquid (water) that will provide the bulk of the heat transfer.

Crusty also with the coil you're correct, the most efficient way of heat exchanger performance in this instance should follow reverse logic, that is having the coldest 'coolant' at the beers inlet where the beer is at its warmest provides the largest amount of heat transfer to chill the beer with less length of coil. This is due to heat transfer rate being directly proportional to the temperature difference. If the beer is at its almost coldest temperature by the time it gets to the coldest part of the ice slurry then it will have the least amount of temperature difference and thus heat transfer at this point. Hope that makes sense.

Practically speaking though with either plate or coil here the coolant temp would be relatively consistent throughout so it would be more a calculation based on volume flow, temp in and temp out which if we kept the ice slurry consistent would define what the optimally could length would be. Of course it's just pouring some beers so we probably don't need to get all crazy about **** [emoji1]

 

[Crusty]

We certainly don't need to get crazy about ****. The reason for the questions is I'm not sure which setup would be best, a couple of coils or the plate. I did get a heads up that the coils were pretty crap so still looking at a plate at this stage.

 

[siege]

My 2c:

coils repurposed from a glycol chiller are the best of both worlds if you can find them floating around on Gumtree like I did:
- holds a large volume because they are like 12mm diameter so pour as fast as you like and it'll always be cold
- coils are flat and 2 fit perfectly in the bottom of a Coleman Xtreme esky leaving loads of room for bottles on top

ps thanks for the chance to show off these pics again.

 

[Crusty]

My 2c:

coils repurposed from a glycol chiller are the best of both worlds if you can find them floating around on Gumtree like I did:
- holds a large volume because they are like 12mm diameter so pour as fast as you like and it'll always be cold
- coils are flat and 2 fit perfectly in the bottom of a Coleman Xtreme esky leaving loads of room for bottles on top

ps thanks for the chance to show off these pics again.

Great setup you have there. Those taps are Andale DA?. Im looking at putting those on my setup.

 

[///]

if I counted it up I have probably spent 12 million years in front of magic boxes, they have to drain. If you pour 3-400 litres in a day as we will and do not drain, the whole thing will be a basket case

Gas pressure for a warm keg should be at about 220 odd, stick keg in a backer of ice if poss to help the box out

Plates work best, they are always under the ice ... Coils will present out when only a bit of the ice melts

 

[Crusty]

C'mon guys, lets get some jockey box **** happening.
I want to see some photos of your setups for ideas & inspiration.
I think I'm looking at a plate for mine at this stage.
Thanks for kicking it off siege.

 

[Weizguy]

Great setup you have there. Those taps are Andale DA?. Im looking at putting those on my setup.

Taps are absolutely Andale Floryte, and not DA.

FWIW, we (Hunter United Brewers club) use a plate chiller at Bitter And Twisted festival. pouring approx 280 litres of beer per day over the weekend

 

[buckerooni]

FWIW keg king have stopped selling coils too, rang up just last week about it.

 

[fdsaasdf]

Has anyone looked at cheaper >2 line plate chillers? Haven't seen any locally, what are the chances that https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/cast-aluminium-cold-plate_1550983203.html?spm=a2700.7724857.29.225.mJ311i will do the trick?

 

[Mardoo]

Looks great. Minimum order 1 ton.

 

[GABBA110360]

might be just easier to put the cold kegs in a bin of ice and just run liquid lines through a box of ice to taps ?

slightly OT but if i wanted to chill a carton of stubbies quick they would be in a heavy ice slurry salted and drink in 15 mins !!!

 

[klangers]

might be just easier to put the cold kegs in a bin of ice and just run liquid lines through a box of ice to taps ?

slightly OT but if i wanted to chill a carton of stubbies quick they would be in a heavy ice slurry salted and drink in 15 mins !!!

I had a great ghetto set up at Chrissie. Wheelie bin with chilled keg inside (50L so fit snugly). Attach pluto gun and coiled up hose to balance. Pour ice all over. Close lid. Worked perfectly.

People are arguing about two different things regarding ice vs slurry, and the annoying thing is that they're both correct.

It all comes down to having enough "cool" energy to chill the amount of beers you pour. If you don't have enough it'll warm up and become useless.

Ice will store more energy as it has both latent and sensible heat, and has a very considerable advantage of maintaining a constant temperature as the ice melts. Melting 1 kg of ice (no temperature change, just ice at 0 degrees to water at 0 degrees) takes 500 times more energy than raising 1 kg of water 1 degree.

Yes, slurry will have a better heat transfer rate, but will warm up proportionally to the amount of beer put through. The heat transfer rate is not the limiting factor here - just increase the length of your coils if it's a problem.

Cooling down a single carton of stubbies (24 beers) is very different to pouring a whole keg (100+ beers).