My Draft Beer Tower Build

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Merkur

BJCP #B1441
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After six months or so of reading how homebrewers have tackled building an esthetically pleasing, reasonable costing and functional way of serving their precious homebrew, I have completed a beer tower and trunk line and thought I'd share the pictures here. My main design criteria were:
- Six beers on tap
- Two beers 'On deck' for a total of eight kegs
- No lifting kegs in and out of a chest freezer to minimize pulled muscles and back injury
- Quiet operation (as this tower is part of a basement bar)
- Efficient trunk line cooling
In the past, I have built two four-keg kegerators before, one freezer based and one refrigerator based and I have a Kegco XCK-1B four tap commercial unit. The Kegco does the job but is designed for stand alone (not under counter, built in, use and is very noisy. After a lot of research and talking with other homebrewers I settled on the following configuration:
- Two Komos V2 kegerators sourced from BrewHardware.com
- Six line trunk with a 3/8" copper core. Maximum length is 13' from furthest keg to tap
- Pumped water to chill the trunk line. Reservoir in one of the kegerators.
- 5mm EVABarrier line for beer from HomeBrewHardware.com
- 2.5" Black Iron Beer Tower. 'T' Configuration. Parts sourced from SupplyHouse.com
- 20" Drip tray with dual glass washers
- Intertap faucets with removable nozzles and spring closure sourced from BrewHardware.com
- John Guest/Duotight beer and CO2 connections

The tower construction started seven days ago and we had our first family test of he system this weekend. It all worked well although I feel that the beer line chilling needs some optimization. As a result I have instumented the trunk lie and filled a keg with water to test the delivery temperatures. There is only 2.6 Fluid ounces of beer in a 13' run of the 5mm EVA pipe so the trunk line cooling does not significantly affect the temperature of a glass of beer. It does however contribute to the foaming. Currently, as designed with no tweaking, the beer foam is manageble. A little high but certainly on a par with the Kegco commercial unit I have which uses a chilled air feed to the tower.

I will post the pictures below and I hope this helps others in the design and build of their beer tower designs and build.

Paul
 

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Here are some pictures of the build progress.
 

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Yes Duncan. They are all Duotight. I looked at using barbs with Oetiker clamps but it’s tough to get the crimper in there. The Duotights are easily removable for service - especially from the shank end rather than the hose end.
Additionally, the price of the tower shank with Duotight connector is the same as the price of the plain tower shank at BrewHardware.com so it’s a no-brainer.

Paul
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/shanksstowerpush.htm
 
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