Tower cooling on a DIY kegerator

[Collo]

Morning all, so i have a mangrove jack kegerator, and it has a little fan and pipe inside the fridge that pushes cool air up the tower to cool it - I've just bought an undercounter fridge that i'm considering converting into a second kegerator, do any of you with DIY kegerators do anything similar, and of so do you have any pics or links to what you used please?

Thanks

 

[MashBag]

Can you post a pic.. Never seen one inside.

Is it intended to keep the hoses cool?

 

[Larse]

Morning all, so i have a mangrove jack kegerator, and it has a little fan and pipe inside the fridge that pushes cool air up the tower to cool it - I've just bought an undercounter fridge that i'm considering converting into a second kegerator, do any of you with DIY kegerators do anything similar, and of so do you have any pics or links to what you used please?

Thanks

There are a few discussions on this on the Home Brew Talk forum. Lots of different solutions using PC fans and tubing and even glycol. These would be from people in pretty hot climates, so I wouldn't get too fussed about it.

The insulation that comes in kegerator towers is pretty poor. My solution was to throw that out and use a much heavier closed cell one. Think it's 20mm thick, leaving just enough room for the beer hose. I got it on Amazon here and it works pretty well.

That particular size fits snugly inside a kegerator tower.

 

[Collo]

Can you post a pic.. Never seen one inside.

Is it intended to keep the hoses cool?

I'll take a pic for you tonight - but yes to keep the lines cool, helps reduce fobbing i assume.

 

[Collo]

There are a few discussions on this on the Home Brew Talk forum. Lots of different solutions using PC fans and tubing and even glycol. These would be from people in pretty hot climates, so I wouldn't get too fussed about it.

The insulation that comes in kegerator towers is pretty poor. My solution was to throw that out and use a much heavier closed cell one. Think it's 20mm thick, leaving just enough room for the beer hose. I got it on Amazon here and it works pretty well.

That particular size fits snugly inside a kegerator tower.

Nice one - thank you - my bar is a 21ft x 10ft cabin in the garden, i have aircon fitted for when I'm in there, but when I'm not it gets pretty toast in there so i think a fan will help, that being said, this kegerator will end up in the shed, the bar is already full, I've got a Heineken David, the Mangrove jack a Carlsberg draught master, 2 Heineken blades and a treble door bottle fridge in there

 

[Larse]

Nice one - thank you - my bar is a 21ft x 10ft cabin in the garden, i have aircon fitted for when I'm in there, but when I'm not it gets pretty toast in there so i think a fan will help, that being said, this kegerator will end up in the shed, the bar is already full, I've got a Heineken David, the Mangrove jack a Carlsberg draught master, 2 Heineken blades and a treble door bottle fridge in there

That could get warm alright. Even with just what the fridges give off. But I still think insulation rather than cooling is the answer here. If you think about it, the volume of beer in the hose that's in the tower would be less than 0.002 of a pint. The rest of the hose is in the kegerator and therefore at the same temp as the beer in the kegs. There may be a little fobbing at the start of the pour as that section cools down, but that should be negligible.

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to eliminate fobbing and have done two beer hose replacements in my kegerator as part of the process in trying to eliminate it. The first thing I discovered is that most (if not all) of the beer hose calculators on the net are wrong. Out by over 100% in some cases. I now use 4mm ID EVA Barrier hose at a length of 2.5m and this pretty much does the job at a serving pressure of 12psi. Some kegerators now come with this ID hose at a length of 2.1m, so my trial and error method has some validation.

 

[Larse]

Can you post a pic.. Never seen one inside.

Is it intended to keep the hoses cool?

I think it's in the Kegland series X units. This photo from their website seems to show it. Looks like a tight fit to get your beer lines up there too.