Heatsinks on tap shaft in kegerator?

[MrChoat]

Hi all.

I'm throwing together a two tap kegerator out of an old 420l all fridge (no freezer). I've worked out I can fit 2-6 kegs in it, depending on what fermenter is crash cooling in there at that time.

As I was reading about needing to keep beer lines and taps cool, has anyone tried attaching heatsinks to the long shaft behind the tap inside the fridge?

I'm thinking of getting a 450mm long piece of 3mm x 40mm flat aluminium to give the taps something solid to attach to behind them, then attaching something similar to this..

http://m.jaycar.com.au/m_productView.asp?ID=HH8555#1

Would there be any advantage to putting a couple of heatsinks onto the flat alloy bar to try to cool the taps outside the fridge, or is it unnecessary?

Cheers.

 

[MaltyHops]

Errm... unless your surrounding environs are colder than your beer, the heatsink is likely to act as a heat absorber and warm up your beer rather than cooling it

 

[sp0rk]

My solution to this problem was to buy lock in shanks (works with snap/fatlocks as well), made little covers for the shanks from armaflex and stored my taps inside of my fridge when not in use
then when it was time for a session, I'd grab the taps out of the fridge, attach them and everything would be nice and cold

 

[n87]

just had a thought!

(this is for a full size fridge obviously)

put the taps on the inside of the door
open fridge
pour yourself a brew
close fridge

i was thinking of a seperate (smaller) door on the side that you opened and had your taps in that, ready to pour... but thats alot of work.

 

[sp0rk]

Or just have a pluto gun/picnic tap inside the fridge...
It's working well for me right now while I'm too lazy to build a collar

 

[brad81]

So what you are outlining is passive cooling.

You make it active cooling by attaching a small fan (blowing upwards) in a similar fashion to the way a CPU cooler operates.

I've been toying with the idea of circulating the air in my keezer, but I'm lazy, so meh.

 

[MrChoat]

Errm... unless your surrounding environs are colder than your beer, the heatsink is likely to act as a heat absorber and warm up your beer rather than cooling it

The heatsinks will be inside the fridge, hopefully cooling the metal taps outside the fridge. The fridge might have to work harder to dissipate the extra heat radiating in from the metal taps but should still keep the beer cold enough.

Thanks for all your input. I've ready ordered some flow restrictor taps from China, which aren't snap locking and there isn't enough room inside the fridge to mount them. I think I lose more energy in cooling repeatedly opening and closing the door which is why I've decided to mount the taps outside, minimising heat entering the fridge.

I'll give the heatsinks a try, and post results if they make any noticable difference to the temp of the tap bodies when my taps arrive in a week or so.

Cheers

 

[JaseH]

I don't think your theory is correct - if you were trying to cool the beer down as it passes through the taps then a larger thermal mass will help, but you are wanting to get the taps to the same temp as the beer, so the less thermal mass in the taps the quicker it will get down to the beer temp as it passes through. Putting heat sinks in could make it worse as MaltyHops says as it will just mean that any temp difference between the taps and the beer will take longer to correct.

 

[Eagleburger]

My solution to this problem was to wrap copper pipe around the shanks inside the keezer . This receives chilled water from a small tank and pump. I only have the pump running during a session. Before, the beer inside the tap would warm between pours and be foam. If I purged it, I would have two litres of slops a night. Now I have less than 100ml