Running beer line 28" - Questions

[BarnabyHooge]

We recently moved into a new house and I’m hoping to get into kegging pretty quick. Besides the fact that bottling in tedious, I’d really like to have a slick set-up in our finished basement.

Ascetically, the best thing to do is to run beer lines from a stand up freezer (placed in my work room), 28” to a wall in the main room. I don’t want to make this a really complicated ordeal; a simple solution is a must. From what I’ve seen, running the beer line through hard copper pipe ( with the copper then run through insulated PVC), with enough copper remaining in the freezer to keep the copper outside the fridge chilled, should help keep foam to a minimum. Does that sound like it might work?


Other questions:
1. “only get foam on the first pint if it’s not perfectly cooled”. I’m sure there are variables, but if you’re not pulling a new beer every 15 minutes is it going to go back to foam?

2. What would you use on the inside of the wall to attach the faucets to? Is there some sort of metal box to connect the PVC to?

 

[malkore]

Just wanted to clarify...28 inches, or 28 feet?
To me, 28" shouldn't be that much of a cooling problem, as that's probably only an ounce or two of beer...the rest of the glass might cool it down enough.

28 feet would be a whole different ball of wax

 

[BarnabyHooge]

Nope, just 28 inches.

I wasn't sure if it was warm beer that caused the problems or a warm faucet.

 

[Bobby_M]

Well, anything warm in the beer path is going to take some of the CO2 out of solution, but it shouldn't be too bad. The best solution is to provide an air path along the serving line and also an air return and push cold air through that loop to cool the shanks. The next best thing would be to insulate everything really well so that once the first beer is poured, the line and shank stays cooler. The first pour of the day will be the worst.

 

[RogerMcAllen]

I agree that the temperature shouldn't really make too much difference at 28". Don't use copper for two reasons:
1. Copper will leach into your beer
2. Copper is a great conductor, and will warm your beer faster.

Just run your plastic lines inside a piece of pvc pipe and insulate the crap out of the pvc. There was a thread about a guy who did just this sort of thing earlier today, I'll see if I can find it.