Just received the January-February 2022 issue of BYO. Contains a DIY article on a cold room. Do wish I had designed one of these into my basement bar/brewroom when our basement was being finished years ago.
Unfortunately, now, even though sorely needing, no room for such. However, interesting article and giving me ideas…
It is weird how two people can read an article and reach different conclusions. To me, anyone who needs a setup like that one is either an alcoholic or is on the road to becoming an alcoholic, or at least a bad case of pancreatitis due to elevated triglycerides. Beer is fine when consumed in moderation. Every brewer I have known who brewed at that level either wound up with an alcohol problem or exited the hobby because he/she realized that he/she was developing an alcohol problem. Anyone who is drinking more than two pints a day on a regular basis is asking for trouble. Alcohol blocks the liver’s ability to burn fat, resulting in fat deposits in the liver, which, in turn, results in elevated triglycerides. Moderation is the key to remaining in this hobby over the long haul.
Well that’s a fun take on it. Maybe the person entertains a lot.
FOR SALE!! One Barrel brew system. Must sell due to the possibility of getting a fatty liver sometime in the future. What a turd!
Here was my #1 reason for thinking I wish I had built one: kegs on the floor and not being lifted in and out of my kegerator. Once my back goes, that’s the end of playing hockey and that’s the start of me getting fat all over, not just my liver. Of course if I didn’t play hockey, I wouldn’t have a source to give a pint away each week to multiple people after a Tuesday night skate. That’s one of the benefits of brewing: sharing what we’ve made.
I saw the cold room as a very easy way to move kegs around, age beer, and have the ability to keep it clean versus a kegerator which is more difficult to reach in and clean. At some point, I’ll move to a lift system but I have a basement brewery with a finished ceiling so it’s not in the immediate plans.
That being said, I do believe it’s important to moderate our consumption, but I always try to remember that correlation does not mean causation.
Lots of people own Corvettes but few people drive 200mph. Sports cars are much more impractical, expensive and deadly but if you’re a car enthusiast it can be a worthwhile purchase.
I share the health concerns raised, but I brew because I enjoy the process - even more so than the end result - so I share so much of the beer, that I don’t have to worry too much about my consumption level. It has receded gradually over the years, so with the pandemic, the storage of beer became my biggest issue (instead of regularly having 10-12 people at my home on weekend evenings, there were just a handful of neighbors to occasionally send a growler home with if they stopped by to chat - at a social distance).
So, a cold room would serve several functions for me, including easier storage and handling of kegs and crashed fermenters and would take up less floor space than my three chest freezers currently in use. For example of consumption, I will be providing home brew for 3 parties upcoming this weekend and next week and being able to fit those kegs in cold storage is a challenge, given the other kegs already in the chest freezers. This week I will transfer (o2 free) from first kegs to brite, serving kegs for transport to the events. It would be nice to have a walk in cooler in which to do the transfers.
Cheers!
Are you talking about a keggerator or a keezer? Of the two, a keezer is more physically demanding. That is why I store my kegs in an apartment-size (10 cu. ft.) refrigerator that doubles as my brewing refrigerator/freezer.
OR, it could be 20 different reasons where a setup like this could make sense that you have failed to consider.
The legal production for a single person is 100 gallons or 200 gallons per household per year. It looks like that guy had 30 gallons on tap, so unless he is married, then we are looking at close to 1/3rd of the legal limit. A hundred gallons per year works out to 15.38 pints per week, which is considered to be above moderate drinking for a man (24 fl. ozs per day) and more than twice what is considered to be moderate drinking for a woman (12 fl. ozs per day). In fact, drinking two pints day for a sustained period of time is asking for trouble.
I know people who have suffered from one or both disorders due to consuming alcohol at above moderate levels. I came dangerously close to contracting alcohol-induced pancreatitis and I was not drinking much more than two pints a day back in my thirties, often not even one pint a day. I was in excellent shape before I started brewing in my early thirties (I did not like beer at that point). That is how the shaken-not-stirred starter came about. It was the result of being very strong. I had a resting heart beat of 46 BPM, which was low enough that I had trouble donating blood. By the end of my thirties, I was pre-diabetic, which is the main reason why I left the hobby the first time in my early forties.
The reason why people who drink beer heavily gain weight is because the liver is too busy trying to process the alcohol to process the carbs in beer along with any food that is eaten. The unprocessed calories get deposited as visceral fat, a.k.a. belly fat. We refer to this weight gain pattern as a “beer belly” for a reason. Visceral fat is evil stuff because it is deposited inside of the abdominal wall around the organs. The other ugly thing about visceral fat is that it increases aromatase production. Men need small amounts of estrogen, but testes produce testosterone, not estrogen. In in the male body, estrogen is synthesized from testosterone by the body using an enzyme known as aromatase. Visceral fat produces aromatase. The higher a man’s visceral fat level, the more of his testosterone gets converted to estrogen. Since estrogen level (actually, the estrogen known as estradiol) regulates the production of testosterone in the male body via the hypothalamus, the higher a man’s estrogen level, the lower his testosterone level. What happens is that a man gets trapped in a cycle where his estrogen keeps increasing and his testosterone keeps decreasing, resulting additional visceral fat gain and feminization of his body. That is why men with large large amounts of visceral fat tend to develop man boobs (a.k.a. moobs). Any man who has moobs should have total and free testosterone tests as well as a sensitive estradiol (E2) test performed to see where these levels are and take appropriate action if they are off kilter because not treating this problem will shave years off of his life.
Like what? It looked like the guy had six soda kegs on tap.
Some people have friends come over. You should try it sometime.
In my case, the nature of my jobs makes it nearly impossible for me to brew between late spring and early autumn. I love lagers (which keep well) and having the space to store kegs of delicious lagers to last throughout my long busy season has merit.
I also have a compromised lower back, so not having to lift kegs in or out of a keezer makes sense.
I could go on, but I hope you get my meaning. There may be factors involved, that you haven’t considered, where a setup like this makes perfect sense.
Been on a wait list for a 2022 C8 for almost a year…
That is a lot of friends. I had a lot of friends come over in my thirties. Yet, I never had more than three kegs on tap at any given time and I used to have to dump beer to brew. I stand by my assertion that six kegs on tap at any given time pretty much equates to alcoholic level consumption. I care about people. I do not want to yet another person I like have to leave the hobby because he/she received bad news from his/her medical practitioner. Euge was the latest example of that phenomenon.
Well, for any man who is open to listening, if you have moobs, you have a testosterone/estrogen imbalance that will take years off of your life expectancy. Healthy men do not have moobs. When I was a body builder, the effects of elevated testosterone resulting in elevated estradiol was known as “btch t*t,” which resulted in hard upper pecs, but soft lower pecs. What that condition is known as is gynecomastia (look it up). The extra flesh in the pecs is not fat. It is the development of breast tissue (a.k.a. feminization of the male body along with rounding of the face and hips). For steroid/testosterone using bodybuilders, it was the result of extremely high testosterone levels without the mitigating affects of an aromatase inhibitor such as anastrozole. We did not have anastrozole available to use in the eighties and early nineties, so dabbling in testosterone supplementation and anabolic steroids was akin to rolling the dice. Luckily, I was an all-natural body builder because I did not have a problem putting on muscle weight. I never got grotesquely huge, but I did reach a point where I weighed 225 at 5’11.75" with 6% body fat. I had a 52" chest with a 32" waist, which means that BMI is a BS measurement. It is only valid for small and medium build people. Muscle weighs significantly more than fat, but if one is fat, one is deluding oneself with respect to BMI.
Well…this thread went downhill really fast.
I have a liver the size of a NFL football, nutz the size of quart jars, moobs the size of water balloons and my beer belly rivals that of Santa himself!! I can crush 18 liters of high octane homebrew in a weekend and shit gold tokens from my hairy ass. For fun I lick door knobs upon entry to hospital rooms. In other words I don’t give it one second of worry about what might happen to me either from drinking, smoking weed or driving my bike. Life happens friend, live it for the end come quickly. Cheers!
Do you have pictures of yourself on the walls of your bathroom? Asking for a friend who happens to be tired of his moods.
Boy, I’ll say. Geez!