Different Way To Keep Kegs Cool?

[BrentonSpear]

Hi,

I was reading on barplan.info about a design that used a small beer fridge with its door off and then they just built a large box around it and insulated it with foam and sheet metel.



The idea being that with the door off the cool air travels into the box and keeps the whole lot cool.

Do you think this would work well? It is the same concept as a coolroom I suppose.

 

[Borret]

:lol: Homer simpson did a simliar thing, except his was a tent.

It may work but would put a lot of strain of your fridge causing it's life to shorten dramatically as it would be struggling under the load. Ensuring the rest of the cabinet was sealed properly would be paramount and imagine you would need a small fan to circulate the air to gove better cooling. Also thermostat position would need to be thought out but it could mean different serving temps in the one unit with unreliable results.

It may work but in answer to your question I don't think it would work 'well". But that's just my angle on it. Other may dissagree.

Borret

 

[Wortgames]

It might work for keeping a fermenter a few degrees below ambient, but I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of that ever working for kegs.

Theoretically it could work, provided you could draw the heat away from the condenser coils fast enough and insulate the chilled area well enough, but in reality a fridge is only built with the parts needed to do its job - suddenly giving it many times the work to do is going to be too much and kill it quicksmart.

 

[muga]

If you want a setup like that your best bet is to have a freezer with a bucket of glycol with a stainless steel coil running through it, that way the beer that comes out is chilled without having to chill the kegs, and you don't need to put as much strain on the freezer as it's being used how it was desgined to be used.

The best setup is getting a chest freezer with a converted thermostat and plumbing via that, you could always build your bar over the top of the chest freezer if you don't have the room to have it as two units.

 

[Jazzafish]

First of all, the chest freezer with a converted thermostat is probally the most practical and affordable method of keg cooling. I suggest adding a small fan inside to stop frost. They look great with a font on the lid too.

But the design you posted, as you said, is basically a cool room. Personally if I were to build one, I wouldn't use a fridge at all. It would just get in the way and will be overworked. I'd simply build a coolroom!

My dad used to have a coolroom at home to store some fruit for the juice shop he used to own. Was basically as you described with a compressor attached to the side. It could do the trick quite well. Maybe some taps on the side? I'd only consider it if I had dozens of kegs to chill.

I remember seeing a site where an american guy turned his basement into a coolroom for brew... can't find the link!

 

[Darren]

You could use an old airconditioner to cool the coolroom too
darren

 

[roach]

Jayse has built a small coolroom for this very purpose and I believe simply uses an old air condition unit(the old box type that sit through the wall or window. This would also be a relatively cheap option as you could score an old air cond unit easily. the insulated panels might be a bit trickier to source tho.

I am sure if you pm Jayse he would post some piccys of his work of art.

 

[Jazzafish]

Just had another look at it, if it is only the size of a small bar, I think it will be fine if the area you want to chill isn't too large. Have to have a good seal.

 

[Wortgames]

Ain't going to work. No way, no how.

You will spend heaps of time and money trying to insulate it and seal it well enough, and every time you open the door there's a day's worth of cold air coming straight out - and that's without putting a warm keg in there!

There are plenty of cases on the net of guys who have made small fermentation chambers by extending a bar fridge, plenty of work for a few degrees, and they are almost all single-fermenter, top-opening designs. By the time you've built it all, fixed up the problems, added fans to circulate the air etc etc etc and then realised it will still never get cold enough to serve beer, you could have bought a secondhand chest freezer and been off and running.

If you were going to go to all that trouble, then you should probably remove the weakest link - ie the fridge - and replace it with an AC unit as Darren suggests.

A chest freezer is pretty much made for the job, it's well insulated and sealed, it opens at the top so no loss of cold air when opening, nice strong compressor etc.

I paid $70 for mine on eBay, and you could probably get a fridge thermostat for almost nothing.

 

[tdh]

I also use a chest freezer with the thermostat set at 2*C and I never get cold feet.

tdh

 

[BrentonSpear]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I already have a chest freezer which will hold 6 kegs and had planned to build a bar around it and put the tap on top but it is a bit too deep for the space I wanted to fill.

 

[skicraft]

I like this idea because it would allow you to have a door
that opens from the front, and have a solid bench ontop
of the fridge as you woldn't have to open the top of a
chest freezer.

Could you use a small vertical freezer for this ???

How about building your own fridge with cool room
panels and the internals out of a fridge ???

 

[mchitiea]

Hi all, Matt the California Pepsi Keg guy here;
When we scrap out Pepsi Soda vending machines, we save the refrigeration decks. MANY people have purchased these to make just what you are inquiring about. They use the Reefer deck and a fan; the evaporator & fan being inside the cold compartment, the Compressor and Condenser OUTSIDE of the cold compartment.
-Look up Soda vending companies or refrigeration repair outfits....they may have Dixie Narco or Vendo refrigeration decks for sale.
Matt.
PS: A hunter bought a deck and converted one of his garage closets into a deer meat hanging/drying room with one of these decks,

 

[skicraft]

Thanks Matt that sounds exactly like what I need !!!

All I have to do is find someone who sells them over
here at a decent price :angry: