KegLand Questions and Answers

[onemorecell]

I sent back n Samsung pc 26" monitor once... only had a minor problem which i explained, they sent a postage label to send it back and the sent a new one out within the week. They didn't even ask for proof of purchase.

Go into Apple with an iPhone, they don't give a fly where you bought it from.. if it has a fault they will swap it.

If something has your name on it, you kinda need to honour anything regarding after sales... Its 2020, shit like that is expected in retail these days.

to be fair, they are two of the biggest international corporations going around... compared to an online (mostly) Australian homebrew shop not even 2 years old. not a very good comparison

 

[Engibeer]

The build was fairly simple. My kitchen and garage share a common wall. The kitchen sink is on one side and the kegerator sits in the garage on the other side of the wall. I have a 6 stage Reverse Osmosis/ De-Ionising filter set up (I bought it from US off eBay and installed it myself. A third of the price of one from a local water filter shop)
Water runs from the mains tap through three carbon/particulate filters, then through a reverse osmosis filter. It then passes into an 8 gallon pressure tank. The line comes off the tank, passes through a 5th polishing filter. It then splits three ways. One goes to the filter tap for drinking water, one goes through a hole in the wall, into the back of the kegerator and connects to the carb keg. The third line passes through a final De-Ionizing filter and ends in a hose with a ball-tap. I use this water for my saltwater aquarium (DI water is not suitable to drink but is important for reef-keeping).
The fizzy water comes out of the carb keg, back through the rear of the kegerator, through the hole in the wall and connects to a 2nd filter tap on the sink.
I have about a metre of hose with carb water in it between the fridge and the tap. I estimate this will be only about a shot glass of warm water. I can run the tap for a second or two before filling the glass to ensure cold water or just not worry.
I actually contemplated putting the RO pressure tank in the fridge as well to have chilled still water from the other tap, but it was more trouble than it was worth and frankly it took up too much space in the fridge that should be used for beer. I can now have two beer kegs on tap in the garage and endless fizzy water on the kitchen.
I tried to convince the missus to let me install a couple of beer taps on the kitchen counter and run the beer through the wall as well. Needless to say it was not met with enthusiasm.
Eventually I’ll upgrade to a Kegerator X for four kegs and look at putting the RO tank in there for cold filtered water but I need to get a few years out of the current setup before wasting money on a fridge upgrade.

Why not get a gumtree small bar fridge and sit it beside the kegerator for your cold water storage?

 

[Engibeer]

Just finished installation of the “continuous Carbonator keg reactor.”
Phew, I think there is an unwritten natural law somewhere that every single DIY project, no matter how simple it may seem, is going to end up WAY more complicated than expected!
From the fact that most standard keg fittings seem to be 8mm vs the 1/4” tubing that’s standard in water filtration systems, to the fact that the bricks my house are made of seem to be some derivative of adamantium and chewed up three masonry bits to drill through a single 20mm hole, it was a convoluted process. But I now have a dedicated 19l keg in my Kegerator V4, plumbed through the wall to my kitchen. There are now two water filter taps on my sink - one for RO filtered water and one for chilled carbonated water (and a third line under the sink for RO/DI water for my aquarium)
While the setup was a bit of a pain, it should hopefully be seamless now.

My one question is how long should I expect the keg to take to carb up? Beer can take up to a week while a Sodastream is instantaneous. Is this gonna take a few days to fizz up or should it be ready pretty quick?

Ok so with my experience running two soda water kegs simultaneously for the past 5+ years, one chilling and carbing while the other one drinking, it takes about 48hrs at 30psi to be suitably fizzy. This is heavily dependent on adequate headspace in the keg e.g. 2L or so. The more headspace the quicker it will work. (No carb stone on this setup).

I've installed the carb reactor and been running it for about 5 days.

We normally drink about 10L a day. I've had to increase the pressure to 45psi and turn down the temperature of my kegerator to cope with the addition of ambient water to our drinking keg (28c).

The benefit of this system is that I only have room for 4x kegs in my kegerator and two of these were previously soda water, so I don't have room for a pre-chilling keg, although I thought with one of the PET tee-pieces e.g.
PCO 1881 CARBONATION CAP TEE PIECE https://www.kegland.com.au/pco-1881-carbonation-cap-tee-piece.html
one could use a small vessel with a larger surface area to volume ratio as a daisy-chained pre-chilling vessel prior to the keg. This was my next step if pressure increase to account for less carbonation time didn't work.

 

[soreba]

Ok so with my experience running two soda water kegs simultaneously for the past 5+ years, one chilling and carbing while the other one drinking, it takes about 48hrs at 30psi to be suitably fizzy. This is heavily dependent on adequate headspace in the keg e.g. 2L or so. The more headspace the quicker it will work. (No carb stone on this setup).

I've installed the carb reactor and been running it for about 5 days.

We normally drink about 10L a day. I've had to increase the pressure to 45psi and turn down the temperature of my kegerator to cope with the addition of ambient water to our drinking keg (28c).

The benefit of this system is that I only have room for 4x kegs in my kegerator and two of these were previously soda water, so I don't have room for a pre-chilling keg, although I thought with one of the PET tee-pieces e.g.
PCO 1881 CARBONATION CAP TEE PIECE https://www.kegland.com.au/pco-1881-carbonation-cap-tee-piece.html
one could use a small vessel with a larger surface area to volume ratio as a daisy-chained pre-chilling vessel prior to the keg. This was my next step if pressure increase to account for less carbonation time didn't work.

Doesnt the new ambient water come in at the top? In theory it should stay up the top while it chills and carbs and you pull from the nice cold carbed bottom water? Maybe it doesnt work like that in practice :/ I have no idea as ive never carbed like that but am thinking of setting up a continuous system with the reactor lid.

 

[Meddo]

OK no worries. I personally have a big-arse pump to use for such a purpose but understand that that's not the case for everyone. How about the tri clamp adapter for the base of the unit?

Bump again please @KegLand-com-au, re the tri clamp adapter?

Also do you have access to any manifold blocks for your K-lok gear, similar to below?

 

[Engibeer]

Doesnt the new ambient water come in at the top? In theory it should stay up the top while it chills and carbs and you pull from the nice cold carbed bottom water? Maybe it doesnt work like that in practice :/ I have no idea as ive never carbed like that but am thinking of setting up a continuous system with the reactor lid.

Maybe if you're pulling two glasses in quick succession, but let it sit for a bit and the temperature will equalise rather quickly.

 

[Geordie_Paul]

Hi KL,

I was thinking about buying your bottle filler beer gun as the counter pressure filler I have is just too much hassle, currently using carb cap make-shift. I've had a look in this thread but can't see an answer to the below question.

Is it possible to fit a duotight push fitting for the gas and beer line on the beer gun? If so, what size? I'm not a fan of clamps.

Thanks,
Paul

 

[Josh Dodd]

Why not get a gumtree small bar fridge and sit it beside the kegerator for your cold water storage?

I don't really have room for another bar fridge in the garage, nor do I really want to run yet another electrical appliance. If I did pick up another small fridge, I'd probably want to use it as a temp controlled brewing chamber for beer.

Ok so with my experience running two soda water kegs simultaneously for the past 5+ years, one chilling and carbing while the other one drinking, it takes about 48hrs at 30psi to be suitably fizzy. This is heavily dependent on adequate headspace in the keg e.g. 2L or so. The more headspace the quicker it will work. (No carb stone on this setup).

I've installed the carb reactor and been running it for about 5 days.

We normally drink about 10L a day. I've had to increase the pressure to 45psi and turn down the temperature of my kegerator to cope with the addition of ambient water to our drinking keg (28c).

The benefit of this system is that I only have room for 4x kegs in my kegerator and two of these were previously soda water, so I don't have room for a pre-chilling keg, although I thought with one of the PET tee-pieces e.g.
PCO 1881 CARBONATION CAP TEE PIECE https://www.kegland.com.au/pco-1881-carbonation-cap-tee-piece.html
one could use a small vessel with a larger surface area to volume ratio as a daisy-chained pre-chilling vessel prior to the keg. This was my next step if pressure increase to account for less carbonation time didn't work.

Doesnt the new ambient water come in at the top? In theory it should stay up the top while it chills and carbs and you pull from the nice cold carbed bottom water? Maybe it doesnt work like that in practice :/ I have no idea as ive never carbed like that but am thinking of setting up a continuous system with the reactor lid.

So I pumped the pressure up to about 30 PSI, gave the keg some shaking, venting, shaking, venting etc for about 10-15 minutes and then gave it another 24 hours to carb up. It's going nicely now. It's not super fizzy water, more "lightly Sparkling". I'm not sure if that's because I need to up the pressure more or if it's losing pressure as it comes out of the tap and into the glass. I'm using a standard water filter tap rather than any kind of beer or soda tap. It gushes and sputters out pretty violently and I can get a fair bit of foam in the glass, so I suspect it's just losing its carb pretty quickly. May pump it up to 40PSI and see if that makes any difference.

However, it's pretty fantastic and it's been getting a lot of use with the hot weather in Sydney this last week. It's super convenient to pump a few squirts of soda stream syrup in a glass, add soda water and drink. I'm not normally a plain unflavoured soda water person but a glass of chilled soda water before bed is pretty refreshing and hydrating.
We're going through maybe 2 or 3 litres a day, and it doesn't seem to have any trouble keeping up. Because I'm only drinking a glass at a time, you're removing maybe 300ml from 19l and replacing immediately. It doesn't seem to be enough to dramatically impact temp or carb in the keg.

The one thing that's a bit of an annoyance is wasting warm soda with every glass. Because the line is plumbed through the back of the kegerator and through the wall, there's about a metre of line that is outside of the fridge. The water in this warms up pretty quick, so I generally have to vent the line until the water runs cool. It's about 130-150ml of water each time. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to do because the filter tap is thin metal. You can see it frost up instantly when the cold water starts running through it, so there's a super-easy visual indicator. I've been spit-balling ideas of trying to wrap the soda line in a thicker insulated hose and pushing cold air into it, similar to how the built-in chilled font in the Kegerator works, but I'm not entirely sure how that would work over the length of the line, and trying to pump air into both the soda line and the beer font. For now, 100ml of warm soda down the drain isn't the end of the world.

Next up, I need to figure out ratio's and measurements to turn the Gnome or Fermentap Root Beer concentrate into a usable syrup to make Root Beer by the glass. It's a lot more concentrated than SodaStream and doesn't have sweetener in it, so I need to do some maths to work out how much sugar syrup to add to it.

 

[fdsaasdf]

We're going through maybe 2 or 3 litres a day, and it doesn't seem to have any trouble keeping up. Because I'm only drinking a glass at a time, you're removing maybe 300ml from 19l and replacing immediately. It doesn't seem to be enough to dramatically impact temp or carb in the keg.

The one thing that's a bit of an annoyance is wasting warm soda with every glass. Because the line is plumbed through the back of the kegerator and through the wall, there's about a metre of line that is outside of the fridge. The water in this warms up pretty quick, so I generally have to vent the line until the water runs cool. It's about 130-150ml of water each time. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to do because the filter tap is thin metal. You can see it frost up instantly when the cold water starts running through it, so there's a super-easy visual indicator. I've been spit-balling ideas of trying to wrap the soda line in a thicker insulated hose and pushing cold air into it, similar to how the built-in chilled font in the Kegerator works, but I'm not entirely sure how that would work over the length of the line, and trying to pump air into both the soda line and the beer font. For now, 100ml of warm soda down the drain isn't the end of the world.

Thanks for reporting how it's going. I'm surprised the water only seems to be lightly sparkling at 30psi after a week. What temperature is your fridge set to?

As far as chilling the line goes, you could run a glycol line inside foam insulation alongside the liquid.

I'll be in a similar situation with a 3m warm run outside of the fridge. To keep the carbonation up over the long run I'll use a larger ID line into the back of a brumby tap. Obviously this means even more water in the line at ambient temp, but I'm not sure I care about venting a bit of soda water to chill the tap, other consumers may have different opinions but I'm happy to drink it as long as it's cool.

 

[Josh Dodd]

Thanks for reporting how it's going. I'm surprised the water only seems to be lightly sparkling at 30psi after a week. What temperature is your fridge set to?

As far as chilling the line goes, you could run a glycol line inside foam insulation alongside the liquid.

I'll be in a similar situation with a 3m warm run outside of the fridge. To keep the carbonation up over the long run I'll use a larger ID line into the back of a brumby tap. Obviously this means even more water in the line at ambient temp, but I'm not sure I care about venting a bit of soda water to chill the tap, other consumers may have different opinions but I'm happy to drink it as long as it's cool.

Fridge is set to about 2 or 3 degrees I think? The water is nicely cooled out of the tap, enough that visible frost forms on the metal surface of the filter tap as soon as the colder water reaches it. I suspect that the carbonation is being lost when it leaves the tap and hits the glass because it's coming out quite violently - small tap diameter may be affecting it? It foams up quite a bit so there is carbonation there.

The line seems to keep the carbonation reasonably well, even in the warm water, but as I'm dumping that and drawing fresh chilled and carbonated water into the line I'm not too worried about CO2 seeping out over that short a distance. We've had days in the mid to high thirties recently and the line warms pretty rapidly outside of the fridge, so it's noticeably tepid if you don't discard the first 100ml or so. A 3m run with larger ID line is going to mean quite a bit more warm water at the tap. Of course, the larger volume of water in the line will also cool slower.

Not really sure how a Glycol actually line works? I suppose I need a reservoir in the kegerator fridge and a small pump? I just circulate glycol/water through a looped line inside the insulation from fridge to tap and back? So I need a reservoir, pump and there'll be an additional loop of line taking cold glycol to the tap, and then circulating it back to the reservoir? Mine is not a bar fridge, it's a KegLand Kegerator so it doesn't have a freezer compartment, so the cooling temp is limited to what the fridge can cool it. I may look into that.

 

[DazGore]

@KegLand-com-au is there any chance of making some sort of container that has a carbonation ball lock cap bulkhead type setup, so we can put our hops in it, attach the disconnect and hit it with some co2?
Just to try and purge some oxygen before our hop charge.

Even if it had some sort of mechanism to flick a lever or switch or something to open the bottom to dispense said hops. Maybe multiple attachment options - as in tri clamp, fermzilla, etc... So you would hit with co2, attach to your fermentation vessel, and then release the bottom/trap door when dry hopping.

Maybe overkill, just putting it out there.

 

[fdsaasdf]

Fridge is set to about 2 or 3 degrees I think? The water is nicely cooled out of the tap, enough that visible frost forms on the metal surface of the filter tap as soon as the colder water reaches it. I suspect that the carbonation is being lost when it leaves the tap and hits the glass because it's coming out quite violently - small tap diameter may be affecting it? It foams up quite a bit so there is carbonation there.

The line seems to keep the carbonation reasonably well, even in the warm water, but as I'm dumping that and drawing fresh chilled and carbonated water into the line I'm not too worried about CO2 seeping out over that short a distance. We've had days in the mid to high thirties recently and the line warms pretty rapidly outside of the fridge, so it's noticeably tepid if you don't discard the first 100ml or so. A 3m run with larger ID line is going to mean quite a bit more warm water at the tap. Of course, the larger volume of water in the line will also cool slower.

Not really sure how a Glycol actually line works? I suppose I need a reservoir in the kegerator fridge and a small pump? I just circulate glycol/water through a looped line inside the insulation from fridge to tap and back? So I need a reservoir, pump and there'll be an additional loop of line taking cold glycol to the tap, and then circulating it back to the reservoir? Mine is not a bar fridge, it's a KegLand Kegerator so it doesn't have a freezer compartment, so the cooling temp is limited to what the fridge can cool it. I may look into that.

I'd agree that it sounds like your CO2 is coming out of solution on the way to the tap due to the temperature change. Probably not avoidable while you have so much warm line. With your fridge temp I'm still surprised the chilled water isn't coming out more than lightly sparkling over such a short run.

You're correct, I'd be dumping more water than you with the larger diameter line over a longer run. It will need some testing - I've got plenty of line options to experiment with when I get the time to do the installation - but unfortunately no practical way to reduce the distance and I cbf to run a glycol line.

Yes, a glycol line would work as you say. I've done a diy version to flood a 3-tap kegerator font before, just using a little brown pump with 3/8in line (reduced off the 1/2in pump fitting) with the reservoir being a juice bottle full of coolant sitting in the back right corner of the kegerator at 3degC. Did the job but not something I'd bother with again due to the pain of working inside the font.

 

[cb341982]

Are you still planing on having some 35L Fermzilla's for sale in Australia. I need the extra head room for fermenting Belgians

 

[Josh Dodd]

I'd agree that it sounds like your CO2 is coming out of solution on the way to the tap due to the temperature change. Probably not avoidable while you have so much warm line. With your fridge temp I'm still surprised the chilled water isn't coming out more than lightly sparkling over such a short run.

You're correct, I'd be dumping more water than you with the larger diameter line over a longer run. It will need some testing - I've got plenty of line options to experiment with when I get the time to do the installation - but unfortunately no practical way to reduce the distance and I cbf to run a glycol line.

Yes, a glycol line would work as you say. I've done a diy version to flood a 3-tap kegerator font before, just using a little brown pump with 3/8in line (reduced off the 1/2in pump fitting) with the reservoir being a juice bottle full of coolant sitting in the back right corner of the kegerator at 3degC. Did the job but not something I'd bother with again due to the pain of working inside the font.

Well looks like I spoke to soon with regard to my carbonation setup. Should have researched RO pressure tanks and water pressure a little more. Drew a glass of water this arvo and it sputtered out after half a glass -checked the keg in the fridge and it’s empty. The carb lid hasn’t been refilling the keg. Turns out a typical RO pressure tank pumps out 10-15 psi. I did check pressure with a gauge a while ago but realised I’d attached it to the wrong part of the system and was measuring flow BEFORE the RO tank. Had to vent all the CO2 from the keg before the carb lid would start filling again. At this point I see three options:

1. Plum this in before the RO system. I can probably add a tee after the first set of filters but before the RO membrane and still get filtered water. Hopefully enough pressure there to overcome the keg pressure
2. Skip the filter altogether and just plumb the keg in directly off the mains. Definitely enough pressure there but what’s the point of having a filter if I’m not using it?
   
3. Add a 12v diaphragm pump after the RO tank to increase the flow of the water when refilling the keg. I’m honestly not sure about this one. It’s only about 2-300 mls at a time and I have a large 8 gal pressure tank so it should be fine to quickly pull that much out of the tank? From what I can find out about how these pressure tanks work, it’s just an air bladder filled with pressurised air and a bladder for the water, squeezed into a metal tank. As the water bladder fills up, it squeezes the air bladder and creates pressure in the tank. When the tap opens, the air bladder squeezes the water bladder and the water flows. The pump would just be pulling the water from the water bladder faster than the pressure squeezes it out. It should equalise as soon as the tap closes and the pump stops... or at least I think it should?

If the pump doesn’t work with the RO tank, I’ll try option 1 and plumb the keg in before the RO system. If there’s not enough pressure at that point in the lines I can plumb the pump back in after the filters but before the RO membrane. Should be fine to pull water through the first stage filters faster. And if that fails, then I can just move the entire thing to the mains before the filters at all.
Bit of a pain really. I thought it was all setup.

 

[fdsaasdf]

Oh wow. I didn't realise you were relying on the output pressure of the RO setup! A bit surprised you've not carbonated all of the water in your filter housing...

If it were me I'd just put a tee before the RO stage of filters. I presume it's a 1/4" or 3/8" threaded outlet.

I have a 2-stage filter on the main and another carbon filter in the brewing area. I don't have a reliable way of testing the pressure of this outlet but I'm sure I'll find out when I start carbonating.

 

[TheBeerBaron]

@KegLand-com-au is there any chance of making some sort of container that has a carbonation ball lock cap bulkhead type setup, so we can put our hops in it, attach the disconnect and hit it with some co2?
Just to try and purge some oxygen before our hop charge.

Even if it had some sort of mechanism to flick a lever or switch or something to open the bottom to dispense said hops. Maybe multiple attachment options - as in tri clamp, fermzilla, etc... So you would hit with co2, attach to your fermentation vessel, and then release the bottom/trap door when dry hopping.

Maybe overkill, just putting it out there.

Hey Daz, you can already do this (purge dry hop of O2) with the standard collection container that comes with the FermZilla by adding a carb cap to one of the ports... I will link a video to Gash where he shows the process:



You should check out his other tips & tricks videos as they are quite useful!

 

[Josh Dodd]

Oh wow. I didn't realise you were relying on the output pressure of the RO setup! A bit surprised you've not carbonated all of the water in your filter housing...

If it were me I'd just put a tee before the RO stage of filters. I presume it's a 1/4" or 3/8" threaded outlet.

I have a 2-stage filter on the main and another carbon filter in the brewing area. I don't have a reliable way of testing the pressure of this outlet but I'm sure I'll find out when I start carbonating.

Fortunately I was clever enough to put a one way valve in the line to prevent back flow. Also added a few rotary taps in the lines to aid maintenance so should be easy to adjust the plumbing. I’ll give it a go before the RO and see how that works. Have a 12v pump on its way so it’s available if required.

 

[Josh Dodd]

Update: Moved the water line before the RO tank and after the 3 stage filter. Still doesn't look like there's enough water pressure to fill against 20-25 psi in the keg. 12V pump should come in the next few days, so I'll plumb that into the line where it 's setup now, before the RO tank. I should be able to mount the pump in the garage, so it's away from the already crowded undersink cupboard. Hopefully that will be able to draw water through the filters and push it into the keg.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Are you still planing on having some 35L Fermzilla's for sale in Australia. I need the extra head room for fermenting Belgians

We have not had a significant request for these so the 35L ones have only been shipped to Europe at this stage. When we used to make the 35L size we had many customers with excessive head space which was not ideal. We do already get customers successfully doing high gravity Belgian beers in the 27l model with 23L batches so I really still question if it's the best size for the job. The 27L FermZilla Conical or 30L FermZilla All Rounder would probably be perfectly suitable. For Belgian beers you are probably not adding huge amounts of hops so you might find that the All Rounder might be the way to go unless you want to use the cone for harvesting yeast.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Fridge is set to about 2 or 3 degrees I think? The water is nicely cooled out of the tap, enough that visible frost forms on the metal surface of the filter tap as soon as the colder water reaches it. I suspect that the carbonation is being lost when it leaves the tap and hits the glass because it's coming out quite violently - small tap diameter may be affecting it? It foams up quite a bit so there is carbonation there.

The line seems to keep the carbonation reasonably well, even in the warm water, but as I'm dumping that and drawing fresh chilled and carbonated water into the line I'm not too worried about CO2 seeping out over that short a distance. We've had days in the mid to high thirties recently and the line warms pretty rapidly outside of the fridge, so it's noticeably tepid if you don't discard the first 100ml or so. A 3m run with larger ID line is going to mean quite a bit more warm water at the tap. Of course, the larger volume of water in the line will also cool slower.

Not really sure how a Glycol actually line works? I suppose I need a reservoir in the kegerator fridge and a small pump? I just circulate glycol/water through a looped line inside the insulation from fridge to tap and back? So I need a reservoir, pump and there'll be an additional loop of line taking cold glycol to the tap, and then circulating it back to the reservoir? Mine is not a bar fridge, it's a KegLand Kegerator so it doesn't have a freezer compartment, so the cooling temp is limited to what the fridge can cool it. I may look into that.

Hey Josh. It might be worth sending us some photos of the setup. If you email us a bunch of photos sometimes we can pickup on an issue fairly quickly. It's often a lot easier to diagnose once we see what is going on.