bringing beer with me to the cabin

Alright guys and gals, next summer I've got a trip coming up, it's a week in the Adirondacks, in a cabin, on a lake; Away from civilization, cell towers, AND electricity. I'm obviously bringing beer, but want some opinions of how I should go about it. Last year we brought a butt-load of beer in long necks, and went through all of it, took the loooong ride into town to restock, and went through that too; we fished a lot, hence going through so much beer. There will be three heavy vacation drinkers; I estimate we will go through approximately 9 gallons of beer based on the last time.

As mentioned, there is no power; there is a fridge that runs on propane (but I can't stuff my kegs into it cause food has to go somewhere), a gas stove, a gravity fed shower, and some gas lamps in the cabin.

Option #1. - Bottle and transport two batches.
I keg now, but could always bottle a couple batches specifically for the vacation, probably the cheapest option, but I gave away most of my bottles so I'll have to make sure I have enough by the time the trip comes along.

Option #2 - Build a portable 2-tap kegerator.
This would involve building a kegerator out of either a brute barrel or a cooler with wheels (and a collar); bring two kegs and my 5lb CO2 tank. We would probably have to restock the ice at some point? not sure how long it would stay cold.

Option #3 - Build a jockey box.
Either with one or two taps, again two kegs, and my 5lb CO2 tank. I've never done this before, kinda worried about the lines in the jockey box freezing overnight with the ice and what-not, I'm sure we could figure something out.

Option #4 - Other.
Another solution I haven't thought about.

I think option #1 is the best option, but I really wanted to roll out some sort of portable draft system, because I'm a bit of a geek, and hate bottling .

Thoughts and opinions please, I've got eleven months to figure this out, so BIG RUSH!!!

I have done a couple of different things. One is my portable "trashcan kegerator" which is big but awesome. We've lined it at times with foam insulation, but it does use more ice so you'd have to resupply frozen water bottles/ice- especially if it's really hot.

You can also do a cooler, with the keg sitting in it and picnic taps. Insulate it with whatever you can, and it will stay colder than the "trashcan" type kegerator.

Take a look at this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/show-us-your-portable-travel-kegerator-cooler-338722/ for some cool ideas! Some are cheap, some are not- but all are creative!

Not sure how much money you want to spend but my pelican jockey box held ice for 5 days at the beach with temperatures around 90 degrees out of direct sunlight. I went through 6 corny kegs. Two taps 120ft ss coils in a 95 qt cooler.

How about a few of those party pig things or a Tap-a-Draft?

If you get the Tap-a-draft tap thingy, from what I understand, they fit well to a 3 liter bottle.

Personally, I'd bottle it.

The noisy and smelly option would be a chest freezer and a generator for your keg.

The expensive but quiet way would be an Engel 12v fridge with bottles. You'd still need to charge the 12v batteries unless you had a half dozen or so to last.

How's the water temp in the lake? That would be my plan, bottles stored in the water, fridge gets used as the on deck circle for final chilling.

oh and as long as there is beer in the lines it shouldn't freeze overnight.

Jockey box is the answer IMO.

I think a Jockey box is the best answer. It doesn't need electricity and relatively easy to move around. You can get 2 corny kegs and have plenty of cold beer with a small footprint, unlike having 100+ bottles laying around. Then with bottles you have to keep up with them because they are too expensive just to throw away.

Well the easiest way would probably be to just bottle it all, but what is the fun in that, right?

About 8 years ago my we held my brother-in-law's bachelor party at a family friend's hunting camp about 30 miles into the woods--no electricity and all that. The guy who coordinated it got 2 commercial kegs with hand pumps and we stored them in garbage cans full of ice. Granted we were only there for 3 days, but the beer remained nice and cold, and this was in our hottest part of the summer, late August. We kept the garbage cans on the porch which happened to be on the shady side of the camp, so it didn't get too hot even during the day.

Take it up another step by insulating the garbage cans like Yooper said, and I think you will have a good option of bringing up kegs instead of bottles.

Also, if I were you, plan for consuming more than you think. At least in my experience with parties at my house from when I bottled and now with kegging...kegs seem to drain a lot quicker than the same amount of beer in bottles.

Here are some random thoughts I had:
-bottles are portable; moving around a lake and take your beer with you
-bottling sucks and you need to make sure carbed before you go; cloudy beers from sediment
-bottles need to be cooled but can go in a cooler with ice to keep cool
-portable kegerator is large and unwieldy; needs ice; potential pouring issues
-jockeybox is smaller that portable kegerator; needs cooling/ice; potential pouring issues

I don't see anything as a perfect solution, but I did think of this one...

Bottle in growlers from your kegerator (drilled rubber stopper on perlick with growler pushed against stopper allowing slow release of gas while filling - counter pressure filling). The downside to this is the cost of that many growlers (10 gallons about 20 growlers at $4/each is ~$80). I do this frequently and have stored the full growlers for weeks without carbonation loss (as long as you have a good lid seal on your growler). Growlers are typically 1/2 gallon (about 5-6 beers) which should be easy for 3 people to polish, and as long as the growler is left more than 1/2 full at the end of the night it should have no problem surviving to the next day with good carbonation. They are small-ish and portable; can be chilled on an "as-needed" basis in the propane fridge and then put in a cooler to transport. Since you'll fill from a carbed keg you can have sediment-free, clear beer. To me, the downside would be the cost and storing the empty growlers when not in use. Again, not a perfect idea but an idea nonetheless.

Sounds like a fun vacation and you certainly are planning ahead

Edit: Damn people reply fast ... when I was typing only Yooper had replied

One of my friends started a business recently to solve this exact problem! Here's the webpage: http://hotbeersucks.com/index.php/kegoolers.html.

It's basically a heavy duty cardboard box with thick insulation inside that's specifically designed to fit kegs. She said it can keep a keg cold for 5 days with 20 lbs of ice. No condensation leaking and it's light and durable. She's trying to make one to use as a fermentation chamber right now so I'm testing out a prototype, and it's working really well so far.

Yooper said:

I have done a couple of different things. One is my portable "trashcan kegerator" which is big but awesome. We've lined it at times with foam insulation, but it does use more ice so you'd have to resupply frozen water bottles/ice- especially if it's really hot.

You can also do a cooler, with the keg sitting in it and picnic taps. Insulate it with whatever you can, and it will stay colder than the "trashcan" type kegerator.

Take a look at this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/show-us-your-portable-travel-kegerator-cooler-338722/ for some cool ideas! Some are cheap, some are not- but all are creative!

Click to expand...

^^ This with an extra cooler full of dry ice and frozen bottles And tongs or gloves to move the dry ice. Safety says don't put it in a cooler that completely seals that is a scary wake up in the middle of the night, and store it outside. Co2 displaces oxygen it sinks to low spots like water don't sleep in one of said low spots. your gonna have a bad time.

Bottling sucks, and hauling bottles full of beer sucks, and hauling empty bottles back home sucks worser. :cross:

I'd do everything in my power to haul kegs (which don't suck). You can always fill a soda bottle full of beer to drink on the lake (or a growler, or a pitcher, whatever) and still not haul bottles of beer around.

I'll be the blasphemer... buy commercial cans. They travel much better than bottles, chill faster, and compact well for easy pack out. Bring a couple coolers full of ice. Store what doesn't fit in a cooler in the lake, the deeper the better. They will stay cold. Those Adirondack lakes never really get warm.

Give me a second to put my fire retardant suit on before the flames please... :rockin:

Maybe Mini-kegs??? Been looking into having 4 or so around for when I want to take a couple gallons to a part but dont want the manage all the bottles. Carb from your keg or condition in them. Going to be some cost but no more than a jockey box or trashcan contraption.

I built a jockey box from an igloo extreme cooler and a 6 pass cold plate. Served two kegs with 20lb ice for 3 days.

I do this every year for my annual cabin trip with my buddies. I have a cooler that I put a 3 gallon keg in (plus we bring other beer a liquor) but I think the concept would work great for you purposes as well.

We typically go in late Oct. or Nov. so I can often just throw some ice in a leave it outside where it stays at a good temp.

Have fun

Wow - Thanks for the replies and votes; a couple-few comments.

I don't want to buy mini kegs - that means I'd have to bring four to six of them instead of two to three 5 gallon cornies (which I already own btw) and the fact that they are quite expensive when compared to used cornies, assuming I had to buy cornies anyways.

tap-a-draft - similar issue, I don't want to invest in a system I'm only going to use once every couple years, and it looks like a lot more effort than I really want.

buying beer is out of the question; I understand the advantage of buying cans for weight but they still take up space. I also don't drink any of the "big boys" beers, partially out of principle, but mostly because it really doesn't taste good to me; I can't buy craft beer in cans in bulk so it's wicked expensive, like $10+tax per four pack; that's a lot of dimp, especially when you consider I can make 5 gallons of "summer beer" for $20 or less; also I brew my own beer so I don't have to buy beer if I don't want to.

The hotbeersucks system is interesting but it doesn't look like there is any way to keep the lines cool, and it's only designed to be used once or twice per the FAQ's. I feel like I could build a cube cooler system for less money and it would last much longer.

A portable kegorator or jockey box will get a lot of use at family parties; at this point I'm leaning towards the jockey box; a few hundred bucks, can be reused many many times, and I don't need to cool the kegs, just the coils. Maybe bottling won't be horrible, but I remember the last time we brought bottles it was a PITA, nobody had room in their vehicles to bring them home, and the local store would only let us redeem what we purchased from them, so we ended up leaving them with someone else to redeem at one of the large stores that was farther away; we had a 55 gal trash bag left over at the end of the trip with only three people drinking beer.. yeah..

I also don't want to mess with dry ice - it's fun, you can make CO2 rockets with it but I feel like if I use it I may run into freezing issues, and I've never seen a cooler that doesn't seal all the way, so as it changes phase from solid to gas it will build up pressure and pop the lid, thus increasing the melt rate; I'll stick with regular ice.

I own a few growlers already, but I don't want to buy a bunch of them and transport them under pressure in the back of my wagon with stiff suspension for a long period of time over shoddy back woods roads that are mostly gravel/dirt.

I'm glad someone brought up the going onto the boat thing, I didn't event think about that - we went through at least a sixer each while we were out on the water; it was a row boat and a privately owned lake, we wore life jackets so I don't need the safety/legal talk. I'll have to think on this one.. I own a few growlers so maybe we use a bottle/growler filler off the kegs and each bring out a growler on the water, I also own a one gallon glass jug, that could come out on the water with us too if need be.

I'm also dragging my brother-in-law and father-in-law into this, I'll do a batch, BIL is going to brew a batch, maybe get his father to do the third batch (on my equipment or the BIL's) that way we each get 5 gallons of what beer we want.

crap just remembered the BIL's girlfriend is coming along with us.. that's four beer drinkers.. (the wife and MIL don't drink beer), maybe I'm bringing four kegs.. this is a lot of beer..