For those of you concerned with cooling your beer lines…

No, I don’t have a cooling solution, except to say I’m not sure it’s worth the effort.

FWIW, I cleaned out a 5.5 foot (3/16ths) beer line yesterday after filling some bottles from my keg. Just for the heck of it I decided to measure how much liquid is in a line of that length.

1.6 Ounces.

Even if all you do is clear your line of CO2 bubbles, it’s likely that you push out more than that with just a brief pull of the tap.

Anyway. Anyone laboring over refrigerating your lines…just keep this in mind when you’re doing a cost/benefit analysis.

I think it makes sense if you're a commercial establishment (even though I spent the close to $ 50.00 to make one)
And, haven't hooked it up yet.

Yes, but how much beer does it take to get 5.5 ft from 80°F to 40°F.

olllllo said:

Yes, but how much beer does it take to get 5.5 ft from 80°F to 40°F.

Click to expand...

huh???

I noticed a difference in foam just by hooking up a computer fan inside my kegerator. This allowed the chilled air to go up the tap and keep my beer line cooler as well as the tap. I used to get a shot of foam on the first pour of the night.

If the coil of hose gets to be room temp in the summer, the coil warm alot of beer before it is as cold as the keg. This applies more to the kegerator that kal is building where the lines are outside the kegerator.

Also all the metal in the shank and faucet will take a while to cool back down. When the cold beer hits the warm metal, it will foam. On the Kegorator I got from a friend, the shanks stick out about 2.5-3 inches (due to "something he was going to do but never did") One of these days I am going to shorten them (or get an new kegger) but, I took off the insulation he had over the exposed shank cause it was ugly, and noticed an immediate increase in foaming. I put pipe insulation back on (wrapped in much more attractive metal HVAC tape) and was back to normal.
It is the same as why you should chill your bottles when CP or Beer gun filling.

+1 on the length of line /shank/faucet heat storage ability....the included/exposed cc's of beer in the line is .....'inconsequential'.....for me....

Easy method of improvement, but on a 'is it prudent ? ' meter, I err to lazy.

But this ain't a jungle or a desert, either.

If you're south of Kentucky or south west of S.D., or there abouts, then prolly worth it.

I did the calculation when I built my system and realized how little it is, BUT, as Yuri pointed out, while that volume may be small, the non-chilled beer lines will warm up the cold beer as it flows to the tap.

I have 4 ft of beer line outside of my fridge. The beer lines run through a loop of flexible 2" hose that goes up into my ceramic tower and back to the fridge. This loop, or the "fridge hernia" as I like to call it, is encased in 2" of styrfoam on ALL sides. A 2" fan sucks cold air through the loop to keep the beer lines cool. I have no foaming issues.

This cost me under $15. I had to buy the flexible tubing and the fan and DC converter I got on sale at a Radio Shack store closing. I used styrofoam that I'd saved from packages I recieved. Add a little glue and duct tape and I was good to go