Beer Tree!! (Camping w/ a Keg)

[ChemEMc]

I got some great news before going on a camping trip last week, so I decided there needed to be some extra celebrating. So we carried a pony keg up the mountain to camp.

The useful info here is that we found a way to keep it good and cold. I dug a big hole then inserted a trash bag. Then put the keg in the bag and spread a bag of ice around it. We then filled in the hole to bury the keg w/ the ice. The trash bag kept the ice from melting into the ground, and kept the keg completely clean (not the CO2 tank, but that was only buried to keep it from falling over). Beer stayed nice and cold until we finished it (which wasn't long, and granted it was only in the 70s maybe). It was a keg of Magic Hat #9 btw.

 

[Jaysus]

great idea

 

[steinsato]

better not leave that sucker unattended

 

[ChemEMc]

haha, it was not exactly a campground. So unless bears have figured out how to work a tap it would be fine by itself.

 

[neovox]

That's great. I was just having a discussion about keeping a keg cold while camping the other day. I may just have to try this when I head north in a month or so.

 

[jaba]

We did this with a 1/2 barrel last summer and kept it cool for almost 2 days while camping in ~75 degree weather

 

[smakudwn]

We just built a jockey box (i think that is what you call it) with a square cooler and stainless steel lines, couple of bags of ice and we had on demand COLD beer.

Your idea costs fAR less money, we should have thought of that. Was that a 1/2 barrel?

 

[snail]

At first looking at the title and then the picture I thought there was going to be a tap mounted to the tree.

 

[ChemEMc]

It's a 1/6 barrel. And maybe next time I'll go for a tap out the tree. As it was this was just improvised. The keg idea was last minute, very last minute. So we got up there w/ no cooler or anything else to keep the beer cold besides the weather, which worked the first night pretty well, but once the sun was up we had to come up w/ something better.

 

[ChemEMc]

Oh, and "Beer Tree" was the name given to it (the assembly plus the huge dead tree it was buried by) after a couple pints. Sadly no beer even grew despite our hopes...

But the tree didn't fall on my buddies tent (a very real concern) so we'll call it even.

 

[ConiferAles]

Another way, evaporative cooling:

When water evaporates it carries with it, heat. If you wrap a wet towel around a keg (or anything, think being in wet swimming trunks and having the wind blow across you, brrr!) and keep it more or less in the shade, the wind movement across the towel will cool it and keep the keg cold.

This is how they designed the original A/C systems on cars: A canvas bag full of water hanging outside the windows, and as the air passed across the semi-permeable canvas, it passed cooler air into the cab of the car!

 

[JJPicardo]

I got some great news before going on a camping trip last week, so I decided there needed to be some extra celebrating. So we carried a pony keg up the mountain to camp.

The useful info here is that we found a way to keep it good and cold. I dug a big hole then inserted a trash bag. Then put the keg in the bag and spread a bag of ice around it. We then filled in the hole to bury the keg w/ the ice. The trash bag kept the ice from melting into the ground, and kept the keg completely clean (not the CO2 tank, but that was only buried to keep it from falling over). Beer stayed nice and cold until we finished it (which wasn't long, and granted it was only in the 70s maybe). It was a keg of Magic Hat #9 btw.

That's a great idea! I've got to be honest though, I HATE Magic Hat #9.