squirt in the turns
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My chest freezer based keggerator set up made a big leap forward yesterday with the acquisition of 2 4-tap flooded fonts. I always thought of flooding as a nice-to-have feature to help prevent foaming issues when pouring that first beer of a session, and never thought about getting the whole ice thing going on. I mean, let's face it: it's a bit wanky.
But now I have the flooded fonts, I kind of want that icy goodness. My idea is to have a glycol reservoir in the freezer (at normal serving temp of about 4°C) with an aquarium pump to feed the fonts. Under normal operation, this should be sufficient to run for a few mins before the first pour to chill the fonts and lines down. Positioned in-line between the pump and the fonts will be a copper water block like those used to liquid-chill CPUs. The cold side of a peltier attaches to the water block while the hot side will have a nice big heat-sink and fan assembly. When ice on the font is required, the peltier gets turned on, further chilling the coolant on its way to the fonts. I'm thinking I'll mount it such that the heat-sink is through the keggerator collar, and so is cooled with ambient air. Having the heat-sink inside the freezer might result in a faster initial chill, but I think the net effect is most likely that the peltier's excess waste heat will warm up the kegs pretty quickly.
I know there are some equations out there for peltiers that I can (and probably will) use to figure out how well, if at all, this will work. At this stage I'm just throwing this idea out there to see if I'm way off track or if anyone's done something similar.
A couple more questions: what temperature should the glycol mix be run at to get ice on the font, but not freeze the beer in the lines?
With 8 taps I guess I'm going to need a pretty big drip tray. It's going to need to surround the bases of these fonts too, if they're going to be covered in condensation. Is custom fabrication my only option?
But now I have the flooded fonts, I kind of want that icy goodness. My idea is to have a glycol reservoir in the freezer (at normal serving temp of about 4°C) with an aquarium pump to feed the fonts. Under normal operation, this should be sufficient to run for a few mins before the first pour to chill the fonts and lines down. Positioned in-line between the pump and the fonts will be a copper water block like those used to liquid-chill CPUs. The cold side of a peltier attaches to the water block while the hot side will have a nice big heat-sink and fan assembly. When ice on the font is required, the peltier gets turned on, further chilling the coolant on its way to the fonts. I'm thinking I'll mount it such that the heat-sink is through the keggerator collar, and so is cooled with ambient air. Having the heat-sink inside the freezer might result in a faster initial chill, but I think the net effect is most likely that the peltier's excess waste heat will warm up the kegs pretty quickly.
I know there are some equations out there for peltiers that I can (and probably will) use to figure out how well, if at all, this will work. At this stage I'm just throwing this idea out there to see if I'm way off track or if anyone's done something similar.
A couple more questions: what temperature should the glycol mix be run at to get ice on the font, but not freeze the beer in the lines?
With 8 taps I guess I'm going to need a pretty big drip tray. It's going to need to surround the bases of these fonts too, if they're going to be covered in condensation. Is custom fabrication my only option?