Kegging dreams: Can one keg serve two taps?

[QuixoticDevice]

So, first off, I don't keg, but I'd like to. I'm waiting to get a few more batches under my belt before I go ahead and lay down a couple hundred buck on a kegging setup. But that doesn't stop me from dreaming...

So here's what I'm thinking: I really like the idea of taps in the kitchen and kegerator in the basement. I even got SWMBO to sign off on the notion. In fact, the most logical spot in the basement for a fridge is directly below where I'd want to install taps in the kitchen, so bonus! The issue is that I also hang out in the basement with my mates and going upstairs for beer when I'm sitting right next to where the kegs are would seem a little absurd. Would it be possible to put a splitter on the liquid-out from the keg and run it to 2 taps so I could drink the same beer either from the kitchen tap tower or from the fridge door in the basement?

Has anyone ever tried something like this? I could easily see this making line-balancing an order of magnitude more finicky or having the splitter act as a cavitation point, making everything foamy... As I said, I'm just spit-balling at this point, but I'm really a babe in the woods on this so any input would be helpful.

 

[BrewNinja1]

Possible, yes. But the line balancing would be the big thing. In order to get it upstairs, you would need a lot of pressure, essentially giving you foam out of the tap in the basement. You would probably also have to use beer gas so you didnt over carb your beer. Then you would have to deal with keeping the line cool to upstairs, or your first couple of beers are going to be all foam upstairs also. In the long run it probably wouldnt be worth the hassle IMHO.

 

[Yooper]

You could do it. You'd have to have the same size lines for both taps, and then just have them ready to go. When you're serving in the basement, just switch by putting on the QD for the basement tap. When you're done, switch to the QD for the upstairs tap.

 

[Jersh]

Possible, yes. But the line balancing would be the big thing. In order to get it upstairs, you would need a lot of pressure, essentially giving you foam out of the tap in the basement. You would probably also have to use beer gas so you didnt over carb your beer. Then you would have to deal with keeping the line cool to upstairs, or your first couple of beers are going to be all foam upstairs also. In the long run it probably wouldnt be worth the hassle IMHO.

I'm a newbie to kegging as well, so this is probably an ignorant question but I'll ask anyways Is the higher pressure b/c the beer has to physically go 'up' or is just b/c of the longer beer line... If it's b/c it has to go up, then forget the rest of my post. If it's b/c of the longer beer line, couldn't he just make the beer line to the basement tap equal length to the one that goes upstairs? Just coil the excess up and hide it away inside the kegerator.

 

[mattd2]

AFAIK a 4m (Iguessing approx 1 story + a bit) rise is equal to a 5.75 PSI pressure drop so you line length for the upstairs would probably need to be around 1/2 of the basement line length if you use the same size tube. As most use 3/16" tube at 10' to balance the lines this would give about 5' of 3/16" to rise 13', i.e. not going to happen.
I would imagine if you were to pull this off so that you didn't have to be swapping over QD all the time (bang bang bang on the floor...... hook up the cream ale would ya!) you would need to run the usual ~10' of 3/16" for the basement tap and 1/4" tube to the upstairs tap.
Then mess around with getting things all balance up for both lines, don't know if the splitter would cause excessive foaming though, I would use at least 1/4" up untill the lines split.
Don't trust what I am saying, just my opinion

 

[mattd2]

I'm a newbie to kegging as well, so this is probably an ignorant question but I'll ask anyways Is the higher pressure b/c the beer has to physically go 'up' or is just b/c of the longer beer line... If it's b/c it has to go up, then forget the rest of my post. If it's b/c of the longer beer line, couldn't he just make the beer line to the basement tap equal length to the one that goes upstairs? Just coil the excess up and hide it away inside the kegerator.

It's both really, you will need a higher pressure if you increase; the height of your tap, the length of your line, or reduce the diamenter of your line.

You are on kind of the right track with you thinking, but it is the pressure drop you want to make equal over both lines. Line length is only 1 part of the overall pressure drop, so if you have 10' of 3/16" tube with not change in height and another line that needs to rise 10' you will either need to reduce the line length or increase the tube diameter, since if you reduce the line length you would no longer be able to make it up 10' the only option is to increase the diameter.
Hopefully that didn't make things even more confusing!

 

[QuixoticDevice]

Thanks for all the replies. The general consensus I'm getting is that it should be possible, so long as the resistance of the two lines is equal. I've been reading the BA Draught Beer Quality Manual and, given the info I'm getting there, balancing those two lines shouldn't be that bad. The kitchen line would gain .5 lbs of resistance for each vertical foot of rise from the center of the keg to the tap and, in my hypothetical setup, that rise would be pretty close to 10' which would give that an extra 5 lbs of resistance. So then, going from the examples in the manual, if I were to have a serving pressure of, say, 11 PSI, and was using 1/4" ID barrier tubing(resistance .30 lbs per ft) for the kitchen line, that would give me 20' of line to play with (5 lbs + 20*.30 lbs = 11 lbs = balanced line). Then, if I were to run 3/16" ID vinyl beer line (3.0 lbs per ft resistance) to the fridge door, that'd leave me with 3 2/3' of line(3*3.666666666' = 11 lbs = balanced line).
Obviously, some of these values are kind of hand-wavy, but it still seems doable. Anybody see any glaring problems with my math? This doesn't even go into the further obstacle of chilling the kitchen line, but there are plenty of other threads dealing with that.
Worst case, if everything fails, my plan is to just have the taps up in the kitchen. The awesome factor of having a draught beer in the kitchen outweighs the hassle of running upstairs for a refill. But if I can have both, all the better.

 

[bsdx]

I saw recently that they have dual output kegs:
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=12476
Maybe you could modify a keg so it had two dip tubes and outputs or just buy one?

 

[KillerKellers]

Do 10g batches and let one keg feed upstairs and the other for downstairs. You also need to keep in mind that you need to keep the lines cool all the way up to the kitchen.