Single Primary with Distribution Manifold or Multiple Secondary Regulators

[Nagorg]

Hey HBT. I'm posting here because I cant find this topic being discussed specifically. I'm planning my next keezer and am sorting out different options.

In this case, I'm debating the continued use of a single primary regulator with a distribution manifold -vs- having multiple secondaries for per keg granularity.

Honestly, the single regulator setup I have now has worked fine. All of my beers receive the same pressure and have the same carbonation level. And while this hasn't really been a problem, I'd be lying if I said I never thought I'd like my stouts a little less carb'ed or my Belgian a bit more carb'ed.

On one hand I like the simplicity and lower cost of the single primary and distribution manifold setup. On the other hand, I'm building new and this is prime time to make a change.

Other than the additional costs for a multiple secondary setup, I'm wondering if this might introduce more chances for CO2 leaks due to all the extra "moving parts" along the gas line. I guess that could be mitigated by a hybrid approach where a distribution manifold was used off of the Primary with individual secondaries downstream. This would be the most expensive and complicated approach but might be worth it if needing to troubleshoot a leak.

Anyway, I tend to get "wrapped around the axle" sometimes and a sanity check discussion usually helps. Any one out there that might have used both approaches before?
Any pros/cons from experience?

 

[AlexKay]

I built my first keezer with a secondary for every keg, and over time they've all gotten set to one of two pressures. It was too much hassle keeping all the lines balanced, and then invariably when I had a high-carbonation beer ready to put in the keezer, what would be available was a spot with a low pressure and a short beer line. Maybe if I'd gone with flow-control faucets it would have played out differently.

Whether it's regulators or manifolds, get parts with MFL fittings and use Duotight and EVABarrier for your lines. After multiple keezers and many moving parts, I've had few leaks, and the ones I've had have all been very obvious.

 

[Nagorg]

get parts with MFL fittings and use Duotight and EVABarrier for your lines

A topic for another thread but I already use MFL fittings, Oetiker clamps and EVABarrier beer line. I'm on the fence about Duotight though. I see them mentioned a lot but I have no experience with them nor do I know where I'd use them given what I'm accustom to already.

I almost pulled the trigger on a 4-way Taprite secondary setup. Then I was debating skipping the Primary completely and going with high-pressure secondaries. While researching that, I found some folks preferring a more simple setup and talking about leaks etc...

So I thought I'd post here to see if I could get current and fresh insight into these things specifically. I can see how I'd wind up not adjusting pressures too often. But its knowing I can change it if I want to that sounds appealing.

Thanks for the tip about line balancing. I did think about that. Sounds like I should consider flow-control faucets if I do go this route. That would help my other question around Perlick or Nukatap. I have 2 Perlick 630SS faucets now and love'em. But I'll be adding faucets so trying do decide on this too. Again, I'll start a separate thread about that topic. But if I go with flow-control, I think that lands me on Nukatap since my Perlicks dont have that.

 

[sibelman]

Here's my own take, @Nagorg. Obviously, all the options you're considering have many fans.

I find it handy to be able to adjust each keg's pressure individually. Though (as @AlexKay says) this is generally not needed, it's great if you want to start super-high to speed initial carbonation. Flow control taps have also proven really useful to fine-tune balancing (way easier than changing beer lines!) for various beer types. Even though most of my brews (ales and stouts) could get by without this "granularity," I do mix it up.

So my 4-body Taprite secondary and Perlick 650SS taps have served me well. My brief foray into Duotight/JG connectors ended quickly -- they're easy to work with but more failure-prone than barbs with Oetikers. Also: hooray for MFL fittings, and EVAbarrier for beer and gas.

 

[Nagorg]

Thanks for the input @sibelman .

Do you have low-pressure secondaries connected to a primary on your CO2 bottle? Or did you go with a high-pressure hose off the bottle, straight to high-pressure secondaries?

The only benefit I can see with a Primary regulator is the level indicator. But that's not very reliable, especially if the bottle is inside the keezer.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, my keezer has six faucets, five forward sealing and one stout faucet. I have a dual primary regulator providing a "normal" pressure CO2 line at 10 psi for 2.5 volumes that I use for most beers, a "high" pressure CO2 line at 15 psi for 3 volumes I use for wheats and saisons and the like, and a 75/25 beer gas line for the stout.

I don't brew anything that wants to be significantly below 2.5 volumes, so I've never hankered for another CO2 line or adding a secondary regulator inside the keezer - even though I specifically designed it to accept a bank of Taprite secondaries in case I ever changed my mind

Cheers!

 

[sibelman]

My secondary is low pressure - I didn't even know there was a high pressure (multi body primaries seems a better description) choice. My bottle is external, and you're right that it's rare to get useful level information from the primary's gauge.

 

[Nagorg]

I have a dual primary regulator providing a "normal" pressure CO2 line at 10 psi for 2.5 volumes that I use for most beers, a "high" pressure CO2 line at 15 psi for 3 volumes I use for wheats and saisons and the like,

I've considered going with a 2-body "bank" of secondaries and a small, 2-3 valve distribution manifold off of each. This would give me that same, 2 pressure capability and save me ~$67. That would buy me a faucet..

So far, I think I'm leaning back to my original thought of a bank of 4 high-pressure regulator body's (bank of secondaries..) with a high-pressure hose to my cylinder inside the keezer.

I may add another regulator for use with nitrogen to push wine for SWMBO. Thinking that may increase the "WAF" for my new keezer... Worst case, I could use it for stouts with a gas blend.

 

[Nagorg]

FWIW, I'm learning that "high-pressure" secondary's may not be exactly what I think it is. Stay tuned to see if I can actually do what I thought I wanted to do...

What do I want to do? I have been thinking I could omit a "primary" regulator attached to the CO2 bottle and feed the bank of secondary's straight off the bottle with a high-pressure hose. Then, set serving pressures off of those "secondary's" direct to the keg.

Not sure why I couldn't do that; makes sense to me. But then this isn't my day job. I've been wrong about things many times before.

 

[day_trippr]

True secondary regs have much lower maximum input pressure limits than primary regs. Check the specs...

Cheers!

 

[Broken Crow]

Sorry for the Canadian links, but OBK has a very well set up website and simply perusing the regulator and regulator accessories pages may be helpful in informing your choices.
You can hit the tabs on the 'regulators' page to see what are primary and what are secondaries,..and like @day_trippr just said above; secondaries are for much lower pressures and usually used barbed hose connection with expected input pressures of >160 PSI. There are some primary regulators that expect >3000PSI MFL input and look like secondaries, but they're only avaiable in singles, though you could buy multiples and remove the high-pressure gauge and install a nipple in between to gang them together, but still need the correct CGA connecter.... In short; There's a lot of options, and usually the ideal concept gets pricey to realize.
Hope the links are useful though;
https://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/Regulators_c_1068.htmlhttps://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/hp-hose-6ft-1-4ffl.htmlhttps://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/cga-320-nut-and-nipple-lh.htmlhttps://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/cga-580-nut-and-nipple-lh.html

 

[Nagorg]

Come to find out, Keg Connection no longer sells their "High-Pressure" secondaries online but their website leads you to believe otherwise. They are still available, just not for purchase online. This (the "bad info" on their site) may not be the case for very long as they mentioned the need to update some of these things...

My uninformed brain doesn't understand the difference in High -vs- Low pressure regulators aside from the obvious PSI differences. I guess there may be actual physical differences in the body and not just the graduations on the gauge. So, with this in mind, a "primary" must be a high-pressure regulator with a low-pressure gauge. (And a high-pressure gauge too that we attempt to use for determining how much gas is left, even though it doesn't work very well for that...)

Still, if that's the case for a normal primary, it seems that you could feed a bank of high-pressure regulators that have low pressure gauge's attached straight off the CO2 cylinder with a high-pressure hose. That would basically be an extension from the cylinder to the bank of regulators. Thats really what I thought I was trying to acomplish. But the very helpful folks at KegConnection seem to think thats a safety concern. Sounds like more for the potential to leak CO2 from a high-pressure line than anything else, but thats the tone of the info I'm getting back so far.

 

[Broken Crow]

Come to find out, Keg Connection no longer sells their "High-Pressure" secondaries online but their website leads you to believe otherwise. They are still available, just not for purchase online. This (the "bad info" on their site) may not be the case for very long as they mentioned the need to update some of these things...

My uninformed brain doesn't understand the difference in High -vs- Low pressure regulators aside from the obvious PSI differences. I guess there may be actual physical differences in the body and not just the graduations on the gauge. So, with this in mind, a "primary" must be a high-pressure regulator with a low-pressure gauge. (And a high-pressure gauge too that we attempt to use for determining how much gas is left, even though it doesn't work very well for that...)

Still, if that's the case for a normal primary, it seems that you could feed a bank of high-pressure regulators that have low pressure gauge's attached straight off the CO2 cylinder with a high-pressure hose. That would basically be an extension from the cylinder to the bank of regulators. Thats really what I thought I was trying to acomplish. But the very helpful folks at KegConnection seem to think thats a safety concern. Sounds like more for the potential to leak CO2 from a high-pressure line than anything else, but thats the tone of the info I'm getting back so far.

Yeah! I'm kinda in the same boat as you: For the past couple years, I've wanted to get a 4-gang set of secondaries which of course need to feed from the primary I already have. My kegerator is 4-corny Series-X so there's no expanding on that. Though I love my stout, I don't have have a stout tap and as I'm not really into that 'newfangled' 1950's Guinness nitro-thing, nitro is not on my immediate horizon... If it were though, as it require a seprate beer-gas tank and a primary CGA 580 connection, I'd still need my seperate CO2 only system already in place, so I've just been saving my money up hoping to find space between other cost-of-living expenses to get one of these:
https://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/micro-eco-sr-4p-co2-regulator.htmlhttps://www.ontariobeerkegs.com/tap-sr-4p-5-16in-ch-thru-60lb.html...I just wish they came with a 30PSI low-side gauge as I have vision problems on top my other issues

 

[day_trippr]

A true secondary regulator depends on an up-stream primary regulator. Hence the name.

The difference can be as simple as the springs used - theoretically one could replace the primary spring in a typical Taprite primary with a spring from their "apparently identical in all other respects" secondary regulator, or perhaps vice versa, if one has faith that the body castings have the same strength ratings...

Cheers!

 

[Nagorg]

A true secondary regulator depends on an up-stream primary regulator. Hence the name.

Yeah.. And hence the confusion when reading website verbiage that tells you to decide on high-pressure or low-pressure when placing the order.

I was going to post a screenshot of this verbiage but they have already updated their website. (Y'all are welcome.. )

It now reads as posted below:

 

[Nagorg]

After all of this, and since it looks like I'll still need a primary, I think I'm now leaning towards a dual body primary with separate distribution bars for the 2 pressures I'm most likely to really wind up using. lol

 

[day_trippr]

There ya go