Serving straight from unitank

[ensano]

I need some help. I'm building a home bar and was planning on having 2 14gal ss brewtech fermenters with a chiller behind the bar. I like the asthetic. When pricing out and designing the bar I was running into a few problems.

1. Not a lot of space behind bar with large tanks.

2. I don't want to be a bartender so I wanted a design that was kind of self-serve and this was hard to find a design that worked.

3. Finding a way to store many legs under the bar. Under bar keg fridges are easily 2-4K even used.

4. Cost of the build was climbing quickly.

So I was thinking an idea of just not building a physical bar. Having a counter along the back with a row of shiny unitanks all lit up, that were pressurized for people to walk up to and fill their beer kind of like a beer buffet line.

Kind of something like this (found on google)

If been reading a bit on this and if I remember right there's a tap that has pressure control so it doesn't matter what the pressure behind it is,it has the correct pour rate.

What major challenges would I have with this kind of a setup. Here's my thoughts.

1. I only wanted a few taps. There's only two of us so too many tapped legs leads so spoiled beer. We only really drink from one tap at a time right now so as long as I have at least 2 unitanks we should have a good rotation with minimal downtime.

2. Even if we find it's a bottleneck it's easily scalable. Add a third or fourth tank and problem solved.

3. All cost would be directly into equipment and we'd open up a lot of room in the floor plan.

Thoughts?

 

[Blazinlow86]

I guess it would work ok. I have the spike 18g unitank and can pour a very nice pint from the sample port after carbing in the tank. If your planning on connecting a line from the racking port to a tap your gonna have alot of foam unless the whole things refrigerated to the same temp. I'd imagine you'll need a glycol setup and run it along the insulated tap lines.

 

[pvpeacock]

I don’t know enough about the unitanks, but how do you control temperature?

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

There is a nano brewery nearby that serves mostly from the bright tanks ( they have a tap or two for kegged small batches) by running tap lines from the walk-in to the bar.

 

[Blazinlow86]

I don’t know enough about the unitanks, but how do you control temperature?

In this case it would need to be a glycol setup but that in itself has its own issue's. A purpose built chiller is 1000$ and requires a decently large footprint and requires pumps, temp controllers and some maintenance. When possible I think using a fridge is definitely the better/simplest solution. Glycol has its place when your fermenter is too large to fit into a fridge or there are multiple fermenters but otherwise I feel it's way overkill. To the original poster have you considered getting 2 of those commercial glass door fridges and using 1 for each fermenter?

 

[ensano]

I guess it would work ok. I have the spike 18g unitank and can pour a very nice pint from the sample port after carbing in the tank. If your planning on connecting a line from the racking port to a tap your gonna have alot of foam unless the whole things refrigerated to the same temp. I'd imagine you'll need a glycol setup and run it along the insulated tap lines.

I was thinking of a flow controlled tap clamped directly to the port used to dump grub.

 

[Blazinlow86]

I would imagine you would be getting alot of sediment in your pints doing it that way. My gut feeling is your going to spend alot of money experimenting with this and probably not get the results your hoping for. Not saying it won't work but buying all the high-end stuff and having not work as intended would annoy me. I think you would have a better end product following the standard model of transferring to the kegs. Could you fit a small chest freezer and just one fermenter?

 

[ensano]

I would imagine you would be getting alot of sediment in your pints doing it that way. My gut feeling is your going to spend alot of money experimenting with this and probably not get the results your hoping for. Not saying it won't work but buying all the high-end stuff and having not work as intended would annoy me. I think you would have a better end product following the standard model of transferring to the kegs. Could you fit a small chest freezer and just one fermenter?

This is what I'm worried about. I'm trying to plan it out and weigh the pros and cons out first.

I was thinking of dumping out the sediment before serving OR one options that I read was to do a closed transfer to a clean/fresh unitank always kind of leap frogging the beer from the fermenter to a clean one. Essentially using the clean fermenter as a bright tank. Instead of buying a bright tank and fermenter just have 3 unitanks and rotating them.

 

[Blazinlow86]

The best solution in my opinion is transfer to kegs. As far as undercounter keg fridges go maybe buy a chest freezer and put it on wheels so you can roll it out from under the bar when you need to change out the kegs. 4 unitanks are gonna run 4+grand. One unitank and 8 kegs and a chest freezer 1400 ish..... The 1400$ option is proven performance. The 4g option not so much. Plus if you only use one unitank you don't need another 1g worth of glycol equipment you can just use another frige. With so many tasks brewing adding more complicated may turn out a hassle

 

[ensano]

The best solution in my opinion is transfer to kegs. As far as undercounter keg fridges go maybe buy a chest freezer and put it on wheels so you can roll it out from under the bar when you need to change out the kegs. 4 unitanks are gonna run 4+grand. One unitank and 8 kegs and a chest freezer 1400 ish..... The 1400$ option is proven performance. The 4g option not so much. Plus if you only use one unitank you don't need another 1g worth of glycol equipment you can just use another frige. With so many tasks brewing adding more complicated may turn out a hassle

I'm also adding another 1k for the actual bar build itself, bar top, tower, manifold, etc.

And that's where I'm kinda coming at this from. Bar 3k+ vs 3 unitanks 4K+ but completely unique home bar build

 

[Blazinlow86]

Definitely unique but possibly overkill and very high cost. I have a unitank and love it but my sole purpose in buying it was to get my beer outta the fermenter faster. I can turn out a very clean clear brew in 12 days fully carbed. That's 30+ gallon capacity a month. That's ALOT of beer. Now add 2 more

 

[ensano]

How's this for an idea that might work. What if I phase it in in stages. I've departed the pros and cons of a glycol chiller vs fridge so do a proof of concept with 1 fermenter and a chiller while I still have my keeper and chest freezer/fermenter as backup. My investment isn't wasted cause I was going that route either way

 

[Blazinlow86]

Good idea. I'd definitely plan to connect the tap to the racking port above the dump valve . Because of the shape of the conical all the haze that generally drops to the bottom of the keg over time will end up in your beer otherwise I imagine.

 

[ensano]

Good idea. I'd definitely plan to connect the tap to the racking port above the dump valve . Because of the shape of the conical all the haze that generally drops to the bottom of the keg over time will end up in your beer otherwise I imagine.

Would the haze eventually be pulled out with the first few pints or would I'd be constantly stirred up causing it to alway be there?

 

[Blazinlow86]

I'm not sure. I should have taken a picture yesterday after transferring my California common to kegs . Afterwards I was cleaning the conical and there was a very big glob of yeast/trub stuck on the butterfly valve. If I was racking off that port I would have been either getting small amounts randomly getting into my beer or possibly very big chunks.

 

[Lax coach]

I was thinking of a flow controlled tap clamped directly to the port used to dump grub.

Food comes out of your fermenter?

 

[Zormon]

Ensano, any update? I had the exact same plan and ran into this thread. Good feedback from the group. I purchased one half bbl Ss Unitank and about to buy the chiller. Any learnings?

 

[papz]

The commercial under counter keg coolers are expensive but if you are building a bar yourself you can basically insulate a box with part of that box being a small fridge.
Have a 3-inch pvc line popping out the top for your tower or do it coffin style. I'm pretty sure somebody did just that in a picture tutorial somewhere on this very site.