Jockey Box question?

Hey guys and gals- I recently picked up a used double coil, single tap jockey box and I am taking it with me to Maine this weekend. I am a little lost on the finer aspects of serving through a jockey box as I've never used one. I plan on serving from a 1/2 barrel (from the distributor) using a 5lb co2 setup. Any thoughts on beer line ID size/length from keg to box? Also, I've read I may need to push about 30lbs of co2 for serving. And lastly, I'm going to use a keg sleeve and I'll try to keep it a bit cooler than ambient temps with ice, but the forecast is for temps in the low to mid 80's next week... I realize this is a lot, but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

A jockey box has a long coil inside of a cooler, with taps. Most jockey box setups are designed to be used with up to 30 psi, room temperature beer. If you look at a carbonation chart, the higher the temperature of the beer the higher the pressure needed to carbonate it. When you have 75* beer, you will have up to 30psi to carb properly. As the warm beer goes through the long coils in the jockey box filled with ice, it will be chilled without losing the carbonation. You may have to experiment with your jockey box to get the proper PSI for the perfect pour.

Thanks for your quick reply One thing to be noted is the beer that I will be serving will be commercial brew, so I'm not worried about having to carb it, just pushing it to the tap. Can I use my beer line from my kegerator, or should I go with a larger ID line to the box? Thanks again.

I read that you use ice and water in the cooler to expose as much of the coils as possible and because of the coil you can actually have a keg at room temp. I would ice the keg down any way. I have a cold plate so I just use Ice

zman said:

I read that you use ice and water in the cooler to expose as much of the coils as possible and because of the coil you can actually have a keg at room temp. I would ice the keg down any way. I have a cold plate so I just use Ice

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Exactly. The coil/plate chiller inside the box does the chilling of the beer, which allows you to serve chilled beer from a room temp keg. That being said, if you can also cool the keg, say with a sleeve or in a trash can/cooler with ice, it will mean the beer flowing into the jockey box doesn't have to have as much contact with the ice in the cooler since it is already prechilled, which means colder beer faster.