They have smaller systems available, it’s more just to see what people think.
What I’m leaning towards now is the following:
No fridge. Take a glycol/water pump with the reservoir in a fridge and the johnson temp control probe shoved into the return tube for the glycol. Two pumps would control the following:
pump for circulating coolant upstairs for line cooling
and then, the second pump (the idea here is to avoid buying a fridge)
2.B.) build a ‘walk-in’ that’s basically a big box with a lid to fit all the cornys inside, line the box sides and bottom with copper and insulation, have a couple CPU fans to blow things around a bit.
This way I only have to buy a couple new pumps, and therefore avoid having to pay for a new freezer.
I think you should price out both options - by the time you buy the extra pump, copper line, glycol, insulation, etc and all of the materials to build your ‘walk-in’, it might turn out to be cheaper to just buy a freezer and go with the original plan.
For me the freezer makes more sense in terms of simplicity, but that’s me. I know it’s 350+ euros, but those keg parkas are over 40 euros each. That will all add up pretty quickly.
Thanks for the link though, I hadn’t seen those keg parkas - I might need to get one or two.
Waiting to hear back from a guy in the UK about a “mini remote cooler” which is the little brother of the guy I posted up top. Apparently you don’t have to cool the kegs themselves, as long as they’re around cellar temp. The beer lines get hooked up to john guest fittings and the get pushed through stainless steel coil which is immersed in glycol, then pushed through an insulated sleeve with the glycol feed and return. Super, super, super to install, just drill yer holes and bracket the python to the wall so it doesn’t fall.
The cost is most likely going to be cheaper than doing it myself by building a keezer, etc - probably around 500-600 euros… We’ll see.
Heard back from the guy yesterday. A 5-line system with everything I need save the regulators is ~£500 including shipping. Not too bad, considering a fridge large enough for 5 kegs would run me about 400 euros.
Ah, hrm. If I were doing a real bar, yeah, why not - but I’d be worried about the pump getting sticky because I’d only be pulling a pint or two per day.
I’ve done what the OP is asking about. I have a two-gallon bucket of propylene glycol in a small chest freezer along with frozen food. A small pond pump is submerged in the glycol and supply and return tubes run out of the freezer and into the kegerator, where they are joined by 4 beer lines in a trunk line purchased from Micromatic. The trunk line travels about 20 feet and through a wall to the taps in my basement bar. The beer tubing in the trunk line is barrier tubing with very low resistance.
You cannot have the glycol reservoir in your kegerator. The heat generated by the pump will always maintain the glycol temperature above the surrounding freezer temperature–the temperature of your beer. This system has been in service for almost a year and I’m happy with it. The temperature in my glycol bucket is around 32F (the freezer is at -10F)
The expenses related just to the glycol system were
additional freezer (serves double duty with frozen food), $200
trunk line, 20-ft $350
pond pump for the gycol. $ 30
propylene glycol, 2 gal $ 20
wood collar on freezer $ 40
So that’s $540, but since we keep a lot of frozen food in the freezer, that $200 shouldn’t really count.
With my small glycol reservoir, the glycol doesn’t have much residence time, so I get a temperature much higher than the freezer temperature. If I wanted a lower glycol temperature, I would just use a bigger bucket and more glycol.
