More Keezer Help

I am having trouble with a small Keezer I am using. It is a small Kenmore 5cf freezer with an eight inch tall collar with 2” foam insulation. I have it set up to hold four corny kegs and a basket. The keezer keeps very good temp with the compressor hardly running at all. The temp near the top of the Keezer regulates between 41 and 43, while down in the bottom, the temp hovers right at 38. My problem is that the kegs on the step tend to completely freeze up and it is driving me a bit crazy. To me, the temps don’t seem that low and I don’t really want to run it with the temps that much higher, but I may not have much of a choice here. Anyone care to attempt explanations here?

Crabnut You got me on that one. I have freezer just like that. I only use mine for a ferm chamber though. But have you thought of putting some foam insulation board under those kegs. Just an idea.

I hadn't but I got enough space to play with at least an inch of foam. As of right now, I can only use two of the four kegs I have the space for, so anything that may work, I am willing to give a try to.

Glad I could help.

Anyone else run into kegs that seemed to persistently freeze in keezers? This is really annoying when I go out to have a beer, and one or more of the kegs are frozen up far enough so as to not feed. I have tried adjusting my temps up, and am at an ambient air temp in the keezer around 45 degrees, while still having problems with the kegs freezing. It seems especially true on the step, but is even happening when the kegs are on the bottom. Any ideas would be helpful. so far no luck with placing a styrofoam pad under the kegs, but I am willing to try anything to keep the beer flowing...

I would try keeping the kegs from touching the sides of the freezer. Try wedging a thin piece of insulation between the freezer wall and the keg and see if that helps.

Crabnut said:

Anyone else run into kegs that seemed to persistently freeze in keezers? This is really annoying when I go out to have a beer, and one or more of the kegs are frozen up far enough so as to not feed. I have tried adjusting my temps up, and am at an ambient air temp in the keezer around 45 degrees, while still having problems with the kegs freezing. It seems especially true on the step, but is even happening when the kegs are on the bottom. Any ideas would be helpful. so far no luck with placing a styrofoam pad under the kegs, but I am willing to try anything to keep the beer flowing...

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What is happening with your kegs is that ice is forming on the bottom and blocking the dip tube. It doesn't take much ice at all to block the tube completely. This can occur even when the freezer is set considerably above freezing temperatures. The evaporator coils are typically located in the walls of the chest freezers. The walls will get very cold while the compressor is running. The coldest air will be near the bottom of the freezer and there can be a substantial temperature difference between the bottom of the freezer and the top. Your taps and beer lines will normally be located near the top of the freezer where the air is warmest. If you have a collar on the freeze with taps, the shanks and taps will also be much warmer than the bottom of the freezer. The result is that even though the beer coming out of the taps is not all that cold, the lower portion of the kegs will usually be much colder and possible to the point of freezing. Often the warm beer lines and taps will cause the beer to warm quickly and this can lead to excessive foaming problems at the tap.

I solved this problem by installing a muffin fan to circulate the air inside the freezer. I mounted the controller probe directly in the airflow of the fan. Now, my taps and lines stay cold and the kegs stay at a uniform temperature from top to bottom. I have the controller set to 40 F with a 5 degree differential. Out of curiosity, I timed the compressor cycle recently to see how often it ran and what the on/off durations were. With the ambient room temp at 74F, the compressor was on 37% of the time and off 63%. This while the beer stays at a very stable temp. I want to repeat this test using several different differential settings in order to find the optimum to minimize power consumption. Using a fan will cause the compressor to run more frequently, so it's a trade off on how uniform you want the kegs, beer, lines and taps to be vs power usage. I chose to have stable beer temps at the expense of using a little more power. I run the fan continuously. I've tried it with the fan cycling on with the compressor, but found that having it run full time works the best. A bonus is no foaming problems at the tap too. I like that a lot. The fan installation was a huge improvement at a very low cost. Since then, I have installed fans in all of the freezers I use for fermentation and lagering. The fridges I use already had fans in them from the factory except for a small one that I did a retrofit on.