two tap tower from home refrigerator?

[herbarex]

I don't know if this is the right forum, and i'm new to this, but i have a question regarding a home kegerator setup.

I'm currently building a bar, and I want to set up a 2 tap tower on the bar, fed from a home refrigerator with 2 5gallon kegs.
The problem is, the distance from the refrigerator to the tap tower is over 10 feet...I've read of setups like this:

Dispensing Draft Beer Away From Refrigerator
however they say that you cannot exceed 5 feet of beer line.

my question is, how can I exceed 5 feet of beer line to the tap tower, and have it cold enough so the beer does not foam like crazy, or go sour??

any suggestions are greatly appreciated,
thanks,
jason.

 

[bendavanza]

The micromatic forum is an excellent place to learn about draft system balancing. They have a strict belief in 36-38˚ temp range, which we homebrewers is not totally true. In the commercial beer world, dispensed the way most major breweries intended, it is.
Regardless, maintaining minimum temperature differences between keg, lines and faucet is key to preventing foam. So is beer line resistance, co2 pressure and temperature. At 10' a blower may not be sufficient. A lot of us use 10' lines, but not 10' away. That would leave you needing I'd say 15' of beer line. at 15' there may be too much resistance for 3/16" ID line, you may have to run 1/4", but I don't know the math. Another thing to consider is if the beer is also moving vertically or not.
What you want to do is totally do-able. The next step up from forced air would be glycol cooling, where you would run food grade coolant through a trunk line along with your beer lines using a pump. This can be as simple as a pond pump.
You can search for "balancing a draft system"
-Ben

 

[herbarex]

thanks for the info
the total length of beer line is going to be ~12 feet, with 2 90's and 1 45 degree angle.
the only vertical portion will be up into the beer tower, which is about 1 foot.

the actual distance from the fridge to the tower is only about 3 feet, but i have to route the lines around some things for clearance under the bar to the tower.
is this even possible with a blower? would a blower with a higher cfm output be sufficient?

this is the general idea..

 

[bendavanza]

Wow that's a long line for such a short distance, I guess if it's the only way you can get beer from A to B then it will have to work. The bends lower the flow of air. You might be better off with a glycol cooled setup.

 

[McKBrew]

Just a thought, and probably just that.

I hear a lot about glycol setups, don't know much about them. Would it be even remotely feasible for those who need cooling at a low cost to build a recirculating system out of say a pond pump and copper tubing/ The pump would feed cold water through the draft line passage to the taps and back into a container. I imagine the water would have to be swapped once in awhile, but other than that it should be fairly effective.

 

[yermej]

Just a thought, and probably just that.

I hear a lot about glycol setups, don't know much about them. Would it be even remotely feasible for those who need cooling at a low cost to build a recirculating system out of say a pond pump and copper tubing/ The pump would feed cold water through the draft line passage to the taps and back into a container. I imagine the water would have to be swapped once in awhile, but other than that it should be fairly effective.

I don't know how well it'll work, but if you can wait a while, you should be able to ask this guy.

Somebody in that thread mentioned using anti-freeze, but I'd be worried about that whole death thing, even though the beer and coolant should never mix. I figure there's got to be a reason bars use food grade glycol.

I'd think you could do all right by using distilled water with a very small amount of bleach added.

 

[bendavanza]

McBrew
Yes you're correct. I would use a food grade glycol solution, though. Insulate your trunk line well.
-Ben

 

[herbarex]

Ok, so at this point i'm going to have to do a glycol recirculating system with a pump and a resevior.
does anyone know how many gallons the resevior should hold, and the kind of percentage of food grade glycol to water mix so it will maintain the correct temperature of beer, when the resevior is in the freezer, or should i have the reservior in the fridge instead of the freezer?
thanks
-jason