Chiller Fonts

[Richo]

I have been given 4 Refrigerated CHILLER Posts, including taps. Can these be used for home brewing?

 

[Hoops]

NO, and further to that they could be dangerous.
To save you any danger and trouble you should immediately send them to me for disposal! :lol:

 

[Hoops]

Richo

Are your chiller posts the fonts like in the pubs?
If so they are great, if not I'm sure they can be modified to be useful.
If they have taps on them then they sound very useful.
Any chance of a pic? Much easier to know exactly what you're talking about then.

Hoops

 

[Justin]

I spotted this on a site earlier today which may provide a few ideas for those of us less fortunate to be in possession of a lovely chrome font. Actually looks pretty good in my opinion, yes cooling may be an issue but perhaps you can come up with an idea. If you had a large enough hole and then insulated the tower it wwould be all good I would think.

Cheers, Justin

 

[jayse]

I have been given 4 Refrigerated CHILLER Posts, including taps. Can these be used for home brewing?

What i think the go is with these is for a start you'll need to take up a bit of room in your cold space for a bucket of water in which you use with a pond pump inside and pump that water through the fonts.
So you can see if your using a fridge that holds four kegs you may only beable to have three kegs in it plus a bucket of water.
If you have plenty of room like a big converted freezer than no probs at all.
simply plumb a bucket full of water with the pond pump to the fonts.
If your fridge has a shelf at the top above the kegs maybe you could use a shallow tub on that for the water.
But iam with hoops these things are no good best bet is to send them to me for trial.
I have a quite reasonble sized cool room and they would work a treat using them the way i discribed above.
I have some cobra style single tap fonts coming which i am planning to do just this with.

Happy serving and consuming beer through these. :chug:
Jayse.

 

[Doc]

And a much bigger version here

Doc

 

[Doc]

I'm able to test the straight away Richo.
My keg fridge died last week.
Picked up a new chest freezer for my keg setup yesterday. Fits 4 kegs with room for some bottles (and font cooling solution).

Did you get four singles or four fonts each with multiple taps ?

Beers,
Doc

 

[Gout]

My question is, how to get the lead for the pump outside the fridge, i dont fancy using a hole saw to fit the power plug through the fridge wall
(might have to cut the lead then attatch a new plug - yes you should be a Elec to do this power kills etc)

I will need to do this for my bar as the taps will be 2-3M away from the fridge, and they will run under the floor, I plan to house the beer lines in a pipe and have a cold solution flowing through this pipe, and maybe into the font , then return to the freezer to chill once more

 

[Linz]

Ben,

Cut a VERY small nick out of the seal and run the lead (usually a figure 8 led) and then silastic the lead to the edge of the fridge/freezer. You could mount a power board(multi adaptor) to the side of the unit so just the plug and a little bit of lead hangs out.

 

[Poodz]

Ive noticed a lot of posts about cooling the fonts but no one has explained fully. Im in the market for a font and im already thinking about cooling it with water pumped from a bucket in the freezer. But, what happens to the water exactly??? Does it simply flood the tower (where would the water go after?) or do you run a tube up the font and back to the bucket of water in the freezer? I wouldnt think this would work so well as the water wouldnt be around the beer line.

Can someone who has done this please explain exactly what they have done?

Thanks.

 

[Gout]

Basicly you want to keep the lines and the font cold, because when beer hits warm line or tap etc it lets out CO2 eg foamy beer, flat beer and huge head's and warm beer (all are bad when getting oneself a beer)

So you want to keep the lines cold, stops the beer warming up
secondly if you can chill the font and taps the beer will be cold all the way to the tap!

keeping the tap cold is nice but you can get away with out it, as the beer cools it quick, esp if you are pouring often enough.

So best is cold lines beer and tap
2nd best is cold lines and beer
3rd which most deal with (inc. myself so far) is cold beer

the longer the lines of course the more the beer can warm up YUCK esp. in summer

So there you go, thats they reasons why!

How? you pump cold water around the lines to keep them and the beer in them cold!, you can continue to have the cold water travel to chill the font, then the slightly warmed water by this stage returns to the fridge "bucket" to chill again
so cold water from the fridge transfers its chill to the lines and taps, then returns warm to the fridge to chill again

(you need to caluclate the amount of water V the amount you pump V the temp and insulation of lines etc)

bit of trial and error


P.S Linz thanks for the tip i might end up doing this re. the fig eight and the fridge seal

 

[Poodz]

Some useful info but still not quite the help im after... I want to know how the cold water enters the font and how it will then drain out. If its in its own line then there would be no problem (no water dripping everywhere). From what you are saying, if the cold beer will chill the font after a little while, then theoretically, switching on a pump with water only will chill the font before serving any beer. Then, its a simple manner of a running a line up and back down the font out of and into the bucket of water. And the water would not have to surround the beer line, right????

 

[Gout]

if you only want to chill the font then yes, but i like to keep my lines (3meters or more) cold as this would otherwise mean half a glass of warmer beer.

the way to keep the font cold (eg enter the font and have some form of chiller "thing" then exit, well i am not sure how to do this, i am still trying to work it out, sorry for lack of help in that respect

 

[BrentonSpear]

Poodz,

On one of my two fonts I have glycol tubes running up into the font. This is a separate tube from the beer lines that you would run the cold water through to chill the font.

 

[Poodz]

does the glycol then run out of the font in the same line back to where it came from.

what exactly is glycol? ive heard about it...

 

[dicko]

I might be a little off the general subject, but all this talk about buckets in a fridge or freezer got me to think that if I was doing a set up to cool a font I would be inclined to use a small keg and quik connects which would be much neater and the water is then in a sealed container.
You could even make a tank from a plastic container and just use the keg posts etc.
Any way just my thoughts, <_<
Cheers

 

[wedge]

ok. i dont really know how they work but wouldnt it be better if you recycle you cold water. I imagine it would take some time (5-10 min) for it to cool the tap enough to make a real difference.

As for glycol isnt this just to make you tap 'ice' up? Is this important.

As i said i dont know but am really interested.

 

[Hoops]

Glycol is used as anti-freeze so that the glycol mix can be at well below zero so that it can chill the font to below zero so that you can get ice on the font.

Poodz I understand your question but can only speculate the answer. I am curious as well.

Does anyone know how the heat transfer between the font and glycol line is setup ie: Is it cold glycol/water through tubing which is touching the font?
Or does the glycol/water actually come in contact with the font ie: glycol into tube, out into some manifold where it touches the font, then back into the tube?

Hoops

 

[Gout]

thats the question we all want the answer to, then we can come up with a method to copy it
mmmm icy font *drool*

 

[Linz]

OKey dokey,
Have a quick look at the font(3 tap, for example). If its a flooded font, at the very base of the font, where the beer lines run out. There should be a cap of sorts with "5" hoses hanging out. 3 will be one size and the other two "might" be larger.
Focus on the 2 larger ones. One will run glycol/chilled water to the top of the "T" with a little "T" piece inside the font, forcing the fluids to the ends of the font. The other large hose will just penetrate the cap{assumption} to drain the fluids back to the reservoir

This was the explination I was given by a chap who works in the industry