1/4" OD line for keezer?

I'm just on the finishing stretch with my new keezer and it's now time to plumb all the taps and kegs together.

Up until now i have simply had lines running from a reg to the gas disconnect and from the liquid to a beer gun. These were in the 5/16" OD John Guest line (3/16" ID, iirc).

All my gear is terminated with 1/4"MFL threads and so I need a heap of JG connectors to hook it all up.

Fittings for 5/16" OD are fairly hard to find in Australia outside of the usual brew shops - and there they are hideously expensive (ie $7 for $3 fittings).

1/4" OD John Guest fittings on the other hand are really cheap - they get used everywhere here for water filter systems etc. In fact I can just run up the road to my local water filter shop and its all there and nice and cheap.

So here comes my question... does anyone have any experience with the 1/4" OD line (which is 0.17" ID as compared to the 0.1875" ID of the standard 5/16" OD)? Obviously this is not a massive loss of diameter (0.4mm), but still equates to 15% of total cross-section area. I should also mention that I'm running Perlick 545's with flow control and intend having ~1m lines. Will the reduced diameter turn my taps into an old man with a prostate problem?

Does anyone have any experience with line of this size?

(for reference the JG lines are listed here)

I think it's pretty standard to put the 3/16" hose on 1/4" barbs. Makes a tighter fit which should be less likely to leak. Barely need the hose clamp with them.

I normally dip the end of the hose into some hot water fresh from the kettle or microwave for a minute then force it on to the hose fitting. Once it cools it is damn near impossible to pull off because the hose gets slightly deformed at the end so you have to cut it off.

3/16" hose lines have more resistance than 1/4" lines and should let you have shorter lines at normal storage pressures.

Just to clarify - I've been talking outside diameter (OD). To convert to inside diameter - I'm looking to put 0.17" ID lines instead of 0.187" ID (3/16") lines.

(Being metric-ly minded I'm not sure what 0.17 equates to as a fraction!)

voodoophil said:

I should also mention that I'm running Perlick 545's with flow control and intend having ~1m lines. Will the reduced diameter turn my taps into an old man with a prostate problem?

Click to expand...

The slightly reduced diameter shouldn't increase the resistance too much. Even with slightly more resistance you're likely going to need lines much longer than 1m to slow the beer down for a balanced system. Here in the USA most people use 8-10' (2.5-3m) of 3/16" ID vinyl beer line to get a balanced system. I think that the LLDPE you plan on using might have lower resistance than vinyl, so that in itself may cancel out the higher resistance from the smaller size.

I run the same set up using barrier line at 10ft per tap (12) no problems