Chill chest

Systems, Gear, & DIY
1

Hi
I built an enclosure for my kegs to dispense chilled beer to my kitchen taps. Sort of a kegerator but with remote taps. I already had my kegs on a shelf in the cellar, and taps in the kitchen directly above. So all I needed was a way of chilling and insulating the kegs.

Here is the enclosure I built from 75mm expanded polysteyrene board


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The removable enclosure wall

here is the maxi 110 chiller unit that feeds the cooling coils in the chill chest next door - note the STC temperature controller that switches the internal pump on at a set temperature.


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Maxi 110

here’s the kegs showing the 10mm copper coils mounted on battens, backed with insulating foil.


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Kegs, shelf, chiller coils

here’s the gas bottle, mounted outside the enclosure. I mounted my pegas counter pressure filler on the door of the undercroft. It was the only possible place. The cellar is quite small.


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Pegas

This shows the cooling water tubing coming in from the other room and the gas piping from the bottle.


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Bottle and reg.

Here is the assembled enclosure - isn’t it shiny?


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Installed chiller enclosure

…and this is where the beer emerges…


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inside taps

All in all cost me about £60.
It will hold temperature at 8C with ambient currently at 15C. I hope in the summer it will keep my beers at 12C in 20C ambient.

Cheers
Steve

2

That’s amazing. Does the cool air get blown through to the taps?

3

Ingenious!  Even though Cornelius makes the maxi chiller, it appears that the maxi chiller is not available or not popular in the US.  Does the maxi chiller cool water for circulation inside your enclosure?

4

The maxi chiller has a coil which sits in an ice bath. You can run your beer from a keg through it to cool it “on the fly”. It also has another coil which is pumped and fed from the internal water reservoir. This is what I’m using for this application. So yes, the maxi is chilling the water and circulating it via the pumped output. The maxi does make a bit of noise when running but I don’t hear it in the house. Managed to pick up the maxi for £20 from a mate and previously just used it to chill one keg in a bin full of water with an immersion chiller round the keg.

cheers
steve

5

Brilliant!

That maxi-chiller is intriguing.