Fully flooded font best ways to glycol

[barls]

why not just buy one of the bar sized freezers?????

 

[mrsupraboy]

There still to big. I want something small atleast a foot or 2 cubed

 

[Moog]

I'm going to try something else.....
Rather than running pumps and water etc.....
I'll get 20mm copper tube to run from the font, back into the fridge, where it'll be bolted to a stainless steel block, to act as a heat sink.
The pipe will be lagged (outside the fridge), and the beer lines are fed through it.
No need to solder it or seal the ends, it'll just be the conduction of the cold into the pipe, which should cool the beer....
Heard it mentioned in passing on "basic brewing radio" , anyone else tried it??

 

[Rocker1986]

My flooded font arrived today, now just waiting on the pond pump thingy, which is coming from Hong Kong so it could be here in days or months :lol:. The lines that run from the bottom of it to the taps are quite large in diameter compared to the barbs on the shanks in my existing set up, so hopefully with a bit of heat and stretching and keg lube I can get the beer lines on them easily enough. Then of course there is the piece of tubing that runs up inside it which carries the ice water or glycol. The thing is quite heavy, so that would suggest that its insulation is pretty decent and I am guessing it is probably double walled as well.

Is this like what yours are like mckenry?

 

[Jangles]

I'm going to try something else.....
Rather than running pumps and water etc.....
I'll get 20mm copper tube to run from the font, back into the fridge, where it'll be bolted to a stainless steel block, to act as a heat sink.
The pipe will be lagged (outside the fridge), and the beer lines are fed through it.
No need to solder it or seal the ends, it'll just be the conduction of the cold into the pipe, which should cool the beer....
Heard it mentioned in passing on "basic brewing radio" , anyone else tried it??

Moog, how did yoy go with your font mate ?

 

[krusty_oz]

I use an esky with ice and water, using a pond pump to circulate on my flooded font. Its only worth the effort for a big session. It gets a nice sweat of condensation on it. To get it to freeze up you need to use a temprite or freezer and glycol solution and be happy with the power bill. Note a freezer may not have enough cooling capacity to maintain the layer of ice on the font but might just be enough (with a sufficient sized reservoir) for a drinking session.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Hey guys. We sell equipment to flood fonts, we have glycol chillers and also flooded fonts and all the connections and normally we would be more than happy to sell our wares and promote them on a forum. With that said for domestic use I really am not sure flooded fonts are the way to go and I really would not recommend them for domestic use.

Certainly the initial investment is one thing and the equipment to do it is quite a bit more expensive.

The other thing is a typical medium sized flooded font will consume about 150watts of power constantly just to maintain the block of ice/font sitting above the bar. So this is a considerable cost especially if you are leving the font turned on. If you dont leave the font turned on then your glycol can eventually start growing bacteria as it warms up. Also this loss of cooling capacity also de-rates your glycol chiller so our overall capacity to chill beer becomes less too.

Then you have the issue of the water/condensation above the bar. This additional moisture has to be drained away and removed somehow.

If your glycol has not been chilled enough this can also be an issue. So if you are hooking up water bath with a pond pump and if the water ends up not being cold enough you can end up having the water actually warm your beer rather than cool it. I did see this with one customer who had a kegerator set to 0C so his kegs were quite cold but then he was pumping water up the font and the water was sitting at +6C. So he ended up warming the beer inside the font rather than cooling it.

For most domestic customers I really would recommend air cooling your font especially if you are using a kegerator to keep the kegs cold. Also insulating the font the best you can might not look as good but it makes far better practical sense than having a font frozen or condensating above the bar. Well that's my two cents.

 

[Boxcar]

If your tower/font is located remotely (as in not on top of the keezer/kegerator) then liquid cooling is going to be a must. Otherwise, air-cooling can be done with less fuss, especially if your tower/font us "n" shaped with two channels back to the storage compartment.

Internally glycol chilled with internal insulation isn't difficult on a home-scale and can be done relatively economically using a mini fridge/freezer with infrequent or even on-demand circulation. There should be plenty of examples here in this forum and on a simple google search. Loads of ideas/implementations out there on the cheap. The use of RV plumbing winterizing glycol should also prevent any bacterial issues inside the lines - the reservoir inside the freezer section would always be cold. The outside of the font should never get cold nor show condensation in this type of setup. Cooling is applied only to the internal beer lines and optionally also to the rear of the shanks inside the font.

0 degrees is way too cold to store kegs for any style of beer, so if the glycol lines are warmer than the beer, that's a user-created setup problem, not something that can happen by accident or unintentionally over time.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

If your tower/font is located remotely (as in not on top of the keezer/kegerator) then liquid cooling is going to be a must. Otherwise, air-cooling can be done with less fuss, especially if your tower/font us "n" shaped with two channels back to the storage compartment.

Internally glycol chilled with internal insulation isn't difficult on a home-scale and can be done relatively economically using a mini fridge/freezer with infrequent or even on-demand circulation. There should be plenty of examples here in this forum and on a simple google search. Loads of ideas/implementations out there on the cheap. The use of RV plumbing winterizing glycol should also prevent any bacterial issues inside the lines - the reservoir inside the freezer section would always be cold. The outside of the font should never get cold nor show condensation in this type of setup. Cooling is applied only to the internal beer lines and optionally also to the rear of the shanks inside the font.

0 degrees is way too cold to store kegs for any style of beer, so if the glycol lines are warmer than the beer, that's a user-created setup problem, not something that can happen by accident or unintentionally over time.

Yes we would mostly agree with that. But the reality is when you set your fridge at 0C it doesnt mean your beer is at 0C which is important to remember. The important temperature is what temperature the beer ends up in your glass or your mouth.

If you set a fridge at 0C that is the temperature the compressor will turn off at. Lets say the hysterisis on the controller is set at 2C (which is quite common) this means where the probe is on the fridge will be maintained at approximately 1C (half way between 0C and 2C.)

Then you may find that your kegs closest to the door of the kegerator and further away from the chill plate can be an additional 2C higher than this typically. So even though the fridge is set at 0C the actual temp of the kegs might be closer to 3C.

The if your font is not really well chilled and the tap body itself is not that cold but the time you pour your first pot of beer the beer will then be about 1C higher than this again for that first glass. Meaning your beer will probably end up in the glass at about 4C.

Then if you do not refrigerate your glassware within 1-2 minutes your beer will warm up by another 1-1.5C approximately.

So with all that said a fridge set point of 0C can very easily end up with a beer in the glass at 5C. If you drink that beer over 20 minute period you might find by the end of the 10 minutes the pot might be several degrees higher than this.

It should also be said that the colder you store the kegs the more stable it is and the shelf life will be as a result.

So I would agree 0C is too cold for a beer that you drink in the glass but for a kegerator set temp it's not too bad.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Moog, how did yoy go with your font mate ?

Yes can you send photos?