Dry cooler ???

[Anitza]

Hi guys,
I’m buying a BM20 next week and i’m planning to to keg all my homebrew. The problem i have is with dispensing it. I’m from Europe and kegerators are not very easy to find and building one just takes too much time that i don’t have. I’m thinking of buying a dry cooler instead like the one in the link http://www.lindr.cz/products/pygmy-20#lightbox but the thing is i don’t know how long my keg will last at cellar temperatures considering it has already been tapped. I’ll be using a CO2 bottle to keep the pressure but i’m not planning on refrigerating the keg. Anyone has some experience with this type of system?

 

[IslandLizard]

Welcome to HBT!

If you use good sanitation your kegs should keep fine for months, even unchilled. I age beer in kegs at low room temp (66-69F/19-21C) so your lower (cellar temps) should be even better.

Just realize, your beer will age more and quicker if not stored in a fridge, kegerator, or keezer at 42-46F. For some beers that's better, for most beers A-OK, but for a few they should be consumed as fresh and quickly as possible (IPAs/NEIPAs).

Definitely use CO2 (or beer gas/nitrogen) to purge your kegs and dispense. There should never be air inside.
You may or may not experience some extra foaming and/or lower carbonation when pouring due to the warmer kegs, depending on how much restriction is inside that unit and operating pressure.

I'm sure that dispenser is pricey though, and you only get one tap!

Kegerators are really not hard to build. You can buy perfectly working older freezers and refrigerators fairly cheaply here, used.
I have an upright freezer that houses 5 kegs, and has 5 taps coming out the door. A friend of mine has 4 (top freezer) refrigerators housing 12-16 kegs serving 12 taps through the wall into his bar area.

Many of us also use chest freezers and put a wooden collar between the freezer body and the lid, through which the taps are mounted, or build a tap system on top.

With a little planning, and maybe some help in exchange for beer, it only takes a day or less to build one of those.

 

[Anitza]

Welcome to HBT!

If you use good sanitation your kegs should keep fine for months, even unchilled. I age beer in kegs at low room temp (66-69F/19-21C) so your lower (cellar temps) should be even better.

Just realize, your beer will age more and quicker if not stored in a fridge, kegerator, or keezer at 42-46F. For some beers that's better, for most beers A-OK, but for a few they should be consumed as fresh and quickly as possible (IPAs/NEIPAs).

Definitely use CO2 (or beer gas/nitrogen) to purge your kegs and dispense. There should never be air inside.
You may or may not experience some extra foaming and/or lower carbonation when pouring due to the warmer kegs, depending on how much restriction is inside that unit and operating pressure.

I'm sure that dispenser is pricey though, and you only get one tap!

Kegerators are really not hard to build. You can buy perfectly working older freezers and refrigerators fairly cheaply here, used.
I have an upright freezer that houses 5 kegs, and has 5 taps coming out the door. A friend of mine has 4 (top freezer) refrigerators housing 12-16 kegs serving 12 taps through the wall into his bar area.

Many of us also use chest freezers and put a wooden collar between the freezer body and the lid, through which the taps are mounted, or build a tap system on top.

With a little planning, and maybe some help in exchange for beer, it only takes a day or less to build one of those.

Thanks for the input, i was really afraid considering that a lot of homebrewing sites recomend that you keep your beer cold for the whole duration especially after it has been tapped. I watched a lot of videos about diy kegerrators but the thing is that most of them don’t look very pleasing and more importantly they cannot be moved. I would like a sistem that i can move from the cellar to my backyard or my living room and back. Depending of the season in my cellar it gets pretty cold some times and i don’t want to go down every 15min for a beer.