Guage beer flow

A friend of mine is looking into building a devise that keeps track of how much beer flows through a beerline. I've been tossing the idea in my head and could only come up with one good solution. Thats to measure how long the tap is open, and at what PSI it was opened with.

I was wondering if anyone know of a device that could work, or if you have any better solutions?

Thanks

A note pad and pen. Everytime you finish a keg note on the pad of paper how much you a your buddies drank. After a while add it up and burn it, because you probably don't what your wife seeing it

Or make something like a water wheel that counts rotations. Then multiply volume by revolutions.

some sort of inline paddle wheel.

weigh the keg?

you can buy a flow rate gauge and install it inline fairly easily, if you really want to. That would only give you an instantaneous flow rate though. If you want to measure total volume discharged that way, you'd probably need a digital gauge to handle the integration and data collection. If you're just wanting to know how much beer has left the keg, I agree with the previous poster: weigh the keg.

digdan said:

I was wondering if anyone know of a device that could work, or if you have any better solutions?

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My "better solution" is to have an extra keg conditioned to be swapped with the one that will ALWAYS run out after a partial pour....never a full one. They toy with you that way.


I also bottle a couple 32oz swing tops and "forget" about them until the keg is gone, then pop them.


Good luck!

:cross:

Brew more, worry less about how much beer is being consumed.

Spyk'd said:

I also bottle a couple 32oz swing tops and "forget" about them until the keg is gone, then pop them.

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I am there right now.

Floated the keg two bottles ago

Good thing is theres an empty keg for more darn good beer!

Yuri_Rage said:

Brew more, worry less about how much beer is being consumed.

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Uhh, Yuri, you're missing the point: A chance to build more gadgets!!!




I was thinking of going the route of weighing the kegs myself, with USB scales so you could tie them into your stamp-controlled keggerator. Or, you could always install Coriolis flow meters. They have no moving parts inside and wouldn't present any areas for grunge to grow or pressure-loss problems. I think they are my favorite type of meter, come to think of it, although constant-volume dual-diaphragm meters are pretty sexy too...

you could install a hall effect sensor around the tubing to sense liquid flow, then figure your flow rate and calculate use. Or you could install a float switch in your kegs, or a sonar detector.... But the scale would be the easiest..