Tower cooler or is it a shank cooler?

[KillianBoy]

Been looking through forum looked at all ideas and heard all success stories and eureka moments, I’ve come one conclusion, only a properly working “shank cooler” will take care of first foamy cup problem. There are so many false impressions about which fans work and that you can slap any fan to any AC adapter and the largest tube you can find then voilà a perfectly working tower cooler, I wanted to make a few points

1. Members have said they don’t enough airflow with a 30-CFM fan so they’re getting a muffin fan twice the CFM. There is only so much CFM a 1-inch or less tube will take from a computer muffin fan. Muffin fans are not good at compressing airflow, it’s best at zero compression. The best design I have seem is sold by Kegkits, their tower cooler uses a 40 mm fan that probably pushes under 10 CFM, their tests show 10 degree drop at the faucet, I think that is good as it gets. If you use a muffin fan, make sure your cooler has enough airflow by cutting a hole the size of the tube you intend to use in a sheet of cardboard and run the fan at 12 volt. Then hold a piece of paper over hole and see if it blows or sucks. More times then not, it will suck; then what will happen is that you are creating a true tower cooler, the tower will be cold but the shank won’t be, thus not cooling the first cup of beer.


2. Members have said their towers are cold to the touch and had condensation and are happy about it. If it were me I would be worried and not happy. If it’s cold then there’s heat transfer, if heat transfer then bad, a properly working “shank cooler” and well insulated tower will be cool to the touch and have no condensation (except for maybe the faucet and shank).

3. Members have said that a tower cooler will take care of a chronic and persistent foam problem. Honestly I think it might help but the original concept of a tower cooler is to cure the first beer foam and not to cure constant foam.


There are tons of reasons for continual foam, the main keys to cure foam is PSI and temperature. After both stabilized, and still constant foam, then equipment check, then change beer line length. But no matter what you do the 2 things that need to be done first is get PSI and temperature right, everything else you do won’t matter.

KB

[tamoore]

Been looking through forum looked at all ideas and heard all success stories and eureka moments, I’ve come one conclusion, only a properly working “shank cooler” will take care of first foamy cup problem. There are so many false impressions about which fans work and that you can slap any fan to any AC adapter and the largest tube you can find then voilà a perfectly working tower cooler, I wanted to make a few points

1. Members have said they don’t enough airflow with a 30-CFM fan so they’re getting a muffin fan twice the CFM. There is only so much CFM a 1-inch or less tube will take from a computer muffin fan. Muffin fans are not good at compressing airflow, it’s best at zero compression. The best design I have seem is sold by Kegkits, their tower cooler uses a 40 mm fan that probably pushes under 10 CFM, their tests show 10 degree drop at the faucet, I think that is good as it gets. If you use a muffin fan, make sure your cooler has enough airflow by cutting a hole the size of the tube you intend to use in a sheet of cardboard and run the fan at 12 volt. Then hold a piece of paper over hole and see if it blows or sucks. More times then not, it will suck; then what will happen is that you are creating a true tower cooler, the tower will be cold but the shank won’t be, thus not cooling the first cup of beer.


2. Members have said their towers are cold to the touch and had condensation and are happy about it. If it were me I would be worried and not happy. If it’s cold then there’s heat transfer, if heat transfer then bad, a properly working “shank cooler” and well insulated tower will be cool to the touch and have no condensation (except for maybe the faucet and shank).

3. Members have said that a tower cooler will take care of a chronic and persistent foam problem. Honestly I think it might help but the original concept of a tower cooler is to cure the first beer foam and not to cure constant foam.


There are tons of reasons for continual foam, the main keys to cure foam is PSI and temperature. After both stabilized, and still constant foam, then equipment check, then change beer line length. But no matter what you do the 2 things that need to be done first is get PSI and temperature right, everything else you do won’t matter.

KB

I only have foam issues after the first beer (or the first pour after an hour of inactivity). After that, it's one perfect pour after another. I just added the tower cooler to make the first beer a better pour.

[aspinallar]

I awoke this morning thinking....it's only the shank and faucet that counts. there's only 1/6th of an oz of beer inside the line in the tower of my kegerator.

Why not take a Ziplock bag of crushed ice and drape it over my shank/tap and wait 10 minutes...

I'll let you know tonight.

Alan in PA

[aspinallar]

Much to my dismay, Cooling the shank with a bag-full of crushed ice and water did not help. first pour is about 4 inches of foam (1/2 a room-temp pilsner glass-full) same as before.

My system:
1986 Kenmore kegerator single tap tower without any fans whatsever.
The infamous jar of water at the bottom of the kegerator temp is 31 (although it is actually in RV antifreeze)
Second pour temp is 37.7 degrees on a calibrated thermometer into a pilsner glass which is cool to the touch having been used recently. 1 inch of head.
Beer line: 4 ft of 3/16 Micromatic beer line that came with the new tower purchased from micromatic in december.
Pressure at 10 with a micromatic dual guage regulator (I swear it was at 12 when I went to bed last night)
Beer: keystone light. 34 days before its expiration date stated on the side of the keg.
Location near Pittsburgh, PA 1260 ft above sea level

Tonight I installed 10 ft of beer line and i have increased the pressure to what I understand to be the proper PSI, 14psi.. I am going to let it sit (meaning not messing with it, but having an occasional beer) for a while 'and see'.

p.s. Beer at 14 PSI tastes better than beer at 10 PSI by miles. Also, i am not in any hurry to fill a glass.

Alan in PA

[coorslight115]

KegKits

I bought one of those KegKits tower cooler...what a piece of CRAP!! Don't waist your money, You can hear it 3 rooms away!! and a muffin fan will not push air thru a tube..you need a blower for that. Found one on E-bay that works much better and much quiter.

[aspinallar]

If all you get is 10 degree drop in temperature in the tower, you are way, way, way above the temp required to keep beer from foaming. The tower, and the shank and the tap are still too warm.

Unless you can keep the beer below the foam point == which appears to be about 38 1/2 degrees according to Micromatic's website.==

http://www.micromatic.com/beer-questions/temperature-store-beer-aid-46.html

you still must run a certain amount of beer through the system before the line, shank and tap etc drop to 38F. I bet if your beer is colder it will be easier. 36 is better than 37 for instance. I read that beer expands 3 x when it turns to foam by the way.

So: If your tower is not cooled, it will take "a lot" of beer to cool the everything to 38. And if the tower is cooled to -- let's say 45 F due to an heroic effort -- less beer will be required to cool the entire system to 38.

With or without tower cooling you will get foam on the first pour with a home kegerator. -- unless the hand holding your beer glass, the beer glass, the CO2 tank and lines, beer, connectors, beer line, shank and tap are all cooled to 38 or lower,you ARE going to get foam at home. It's inevitable.

The perfect first pour is nearly an impossible quest with a home kegerator.

We should all note that it will take a very long time to cool the tap and shank to 38 unless the beer running through is LESS than 38. The ideal beer temp thus must be less than 38. [or you are going to pour out a lot of foam]

I haven't given up yet though......Think I'll try a glycol cooler for the tower.....

Alan in PA

[lunkhead]

One other thing to keep in mind is the temperature differential of the thermostat. When it turns off the kegerator begins to warm. This is the air the line sits in and your pumping up the tower. As it warms up guess what the beer in the line and tower is doing. The lower the differential the more stable the line temp will be, but obviously there are limits to what the diff can be set to. A fairly well insulated tower with forced air cooling will have less foam (on the first pour)than the same without air cooling. Want no foam, keep the beer temp in the line the same as it is in the keg at all times

[KillianBoy]

Alan in PA,

I think your kinda confused about this “foam point”, when you mentioned that ½ degree might cause foam, it’s the ½ degree in relation to PSI. Every beer has a certain PSI setting, this setting is based upon temperature. 38 degrees is the base temperature MM uses, others have used beer temperature 33 and as high as 42 and poured perfect beer as long as the temperature of beer in relation to PSI is within ½ degree, if this relationship is wrong then CO2 will break out (look up “flashlight test” and see what you find).

Consistent temperature is key, without some sort of circulation, you won’t have an accurate measure of temperature of the beer in the keg no matter what you do. Understand that beer sits at the bottom of the keg, pushed up through spear, coupler, beer line then shank. A “properly working” cooler keeps the shank and beer line cool and circulates air. Keeping the shank cool prevents first beer foam and circulation prevents constant foam. If air brought up from bottom of the unit in high 20’s blowing directly on the shank should keep it cold enough so the first beer won’t pour foamy. Remainder of the cold is pushed down a return tube keeping the beer line cool, air returning to unit creates a circulation in the unit keeping the cold air from loitering at the bottom

Without air circulation, the cold air will linger near the bottom, warm air near the top, as the beer travels from bottom of the keg, it might be 34 degrees, but the 48 degree area at the top of the unit will warm beer to 38 degrees at faucet, if you set the PSI to 38 degrees you will get foam because the beer is actually at 34 degrees, thus foam. Before getting all the gear for your glycol experiment try hook up a fan inside the unit to create circulation, try this for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Also I wholly agree with Lunkhead, keeping track of when the compressor/evaporator is on or off makes a difference, if you open the unit when the it’s off, then pour beer it will pour foam and warm. It is possible to cool the beer line using insulation, a properly working cooler or just a simple fan.



To coorslight115,

I didn’t mean to start a cooler war, and as I said I applaud the design. What I didn’t say was I don’t recommend buying the unit itself (I have never bought or used the kegkits model). What my intent was to say that the design is easily built by a competent DIY-er. A small 30-50 mm fan are easily available (either surplus from old motherboards or small case fans) and will push air through a 1 inch tube, unlike blowers which have to bought from computer supply stores. The project box for the KK model is smaller then the “other “ one, thus cheaper. So cost of DIY KK model with surplus fan and AC adapter, small project box and 4 feet of 1 inch OD vinyl tubing was about $12 (honestly if you use a small enough fan you can use a small piece of scrap wood instead of a project box). The other model, DIY would be about $20. I honestly don’t give a rat’s tush which one you buy, if your well-off enough to buy one of these, please be my guest, if you want < 20 CFM then KK model for or >20 CFM “other”. It's cheaper to build no matter which design you use.

KB

[jumper]

Trying to cool ONLY the shank while neglecting the rest of the tower's beer line will result in the same thing; CO2 will break out of the warmed beer and come out of the faucet as foam... likely creating agitation and fomaing up half a pint of beer.

I had good luck with insulating the tower, using copper pipe inside the tower itself (good cold-soak properties), and drawing air from near the bottom of the cold plate. My tower doesn't sweat but the shank will get some condensation on it. A temp probe in the top of the tower shows the air inside the tower is the same as the temp in the fridge (I'm exchanging it at a pretty quick rate). I also used a blower type fan as opposed to the PC-fan-in-a-box method. I also have a small fan in the fridge itself to circulate the are and keep the temps uniform throughout.

[aspinallar]

What is a "blower type fan"?
Do you have a model number, source etc?