Forced to use 1/4" (not 3/16") for 15' beer line? - Page 3

krispy d · 08-24-2007, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby_M

Wait a minute. If you have room for 8 cornies, there's no way in hell you'll be happy with 2 faucets. I'm thinking 4 minimum. If you watch craigslist or ebay, you can find a 4 faucet tower with an integrated glycol loop.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Brass-Beer-Tap-Tower-4-Faucets-Glycol-Pub-Bar-Keg_W0QQitemZ120154396756QQihZ002QQcategoryZ67135Q QssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

They'll clean up nice I'm sure with a little polish.

My idea for a cooling loop goes like this: You put a damaged unusable corny in the fridge with a pond pump down in the bottom. The output of the pump goes through some hose outside the fridge and attaches to some 3/8" copper. This copper goes down the insulated bundle of beer lines to your tower. If the tower has a glycol loop, it attaches there to cool the tower too. The return loop can be copper also assuming it still has some cooling capacity left. This goes back to the fridge and dumps back into the top of the corny for cooling again. At the very least it will keep your beerlines somewhere between ambient and fridge temps.

It's odd to me that you can't drill into the countertop for the tower. When would it not be appropriate to have a beer tower on a bar? It's like peanut butter and jelly.

here is one:

http://hartford.craigslist.org/bfs/374589399.html

and another pic:

Funkenjaeger · 08-24-2007, 08:53 PM

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but one option for getting your beer lines run that far without warm beer is 'trunk line' which I came across at micromatic a while back:
http://www.micromatic.com/part-pid-CDI232.html

Essentially a fancier version of more DIY-oriented suggestions made previously - several beer lines inside an insulated jacket, and also some additional lines for you to pump glycol through to keep the beer cold in the lines. Pretty expensive at around $10-20 a foot, but you can serve as few as 2 or as many as 14 beers with one line.

**olllllo** · 08-24-2007, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby_M

If there's anything that I know for a fact it's that you won't be happy with any cheap rear sealing faucet. You already mentioned that you'd be pouring sporadically. That requires a forward sealing faucet unless you're prepared to squirt a bunch of warm water up into the faucet before and after every pour. Rear sealing allows a small amount of beer to pool forward of the seal. It dries, gets sticky, and keeps you from opening the faucet in two days.

This is so true.

If you're not doing this, you might as well set fire to a few $20 bills.

I replaced all of mine with forward seals. I won't even give my old ones away unless I know that they will be used for a jockey box - by definition, a onetime use that requires cleaning each time it is used. It's just not worth it.

Perlick, Shirron or die.

**BierMuncher** · 08-24-2007, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby_M

If there's anything that I know for a fact it's that you won't be happy with any cheap rear sealing faucet...It dries, gets sticky, and keeps you from opening the faucet in two days.

I'll attest to that.

I have rear sealing and they work fine for me only because I'm pulling on them constantly from about 5:30 to 11:30PM....day after day...month after month...

It's a commitment I'm willing to make to prevent my faucets from sticking.

Are you ready to make that kind of committment?

If not...forward sealing taps will save you some frustration.

**kal** · 08-25-2007, 02:18 PM

Ok. Thanks for the input guys.

Buying a tower and then replacing all the taps seems silly, and oddly enough, nobody seems to sell bare towers (?)!

A couple of days ago I drilling some exploratory holes under the sink (seen the picture in my first post) to see if I could run the lines from the back room through the curved bar and behind the mirror to the front bar with the seats where the tower would be. This could keep the lines completely hidden.

Unfortunately that didn't look possible as the curved bar area around the sink is fairly SOLID inside (tons of bracing).

So I thought a couple of lines flush with the black wall up high and somehow covered up would work (using some sort of black conduit) but that might not look great, especially now if I need to run at least 4 lines (2 beer, 2 cooling) and then wrap it all in insulation. If I want 4 lines for beer (which I think I do now) it just gets worse.

So all this to say that I'm going to rethink this a bit. I'll start with getting the kegs, regular, manifold for 4 lines, etc. But then will figure out exactly how I'm going to arrange the taps later.

For now, what I may do is: There's room for 4-5 taps coming out of the side of the wall to the right of the sink and to the left of the black fridge (you can't see that wall in the first picture above). Arranged right the sink would actually serve as a drip tray! I may just do that for now using good forward sealing taps coming out of the wall through a nicely cut/stained block of wood. The best part is that the distance from the freezer would be very small: Only 5 feet or so so I could run 3/16" line and not even bother cooling it (or just wrap it in pipe insulation as it'll all in the back room).

This would give me the 4-5 taps I really want, allow me to not lose more than an oz or so in the lines (since they're so short), and would give me GOOD taps.

Then I could spend some time figuring out how (if ever) I could actually put a 4-5 way tower in the front bar drilled right in and how I'd ever be able pull and cool the 1/4" lines through there. I'd love to eventually have that. I think a nice tower right on the front bar would look so nice, but I'd want to do it right (cooled/lines hidden/etc).

Thanks guys!

Kal

**kal** · 09-26-2007, 03:26 AM

Hi guys! It's been a busy month of buying stuff online and working to install it....

So I ended up doing what I proposed above: 4 forward sealing (Ventmatic) taps coming out of a wall with a drip tray with runoff with some wood trim built by me and a nice bar sign up above. There's only 3-4' of exposed 3/16" hose in the back room so the amount of beer warming up between pours is minimal.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Here are some pictures:

**kal** · 09-26-2007, 03:27 AM

More pictures:

(Note: This beer lines have been completely redone - they now come out the side of the freezer and not the lid, and are cooled with copper line running in parallel pumping fluid from the adjacent fridge freezer. A small pond pump is used).

Room for 7 corny kegs:

10lb tank with a two head regulator so that I can have beer at two different carbination levels. #1 and #2 will usually be Hefeweizen and lager (ie: wife beer) at higher carb level, and #3 and #4 will usually be British ales (ie: my beer) at lower carb level.

Kal

blefferd · 09-26-2007, 04:03 AM

Man That Is Sweet!

McKBrew · 09-26-2007, 04:13 AM

Yeah, I'm jealous as hell. That is beautiful, so beautiful.......

**kal** · 09-26-2007, 04:15 AM

Thanks guys! I'm only 2 days into the beer chilling/carbonating so I'm anxious myself to have a nice pour....

Kal