that right there explains it

 

Thats awesome, more pics of inside please.
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That's a true Northwesterner! Microbrew capitol of the world. Seattle can have it's coffee. Oregonians prefer being known for our heavenly hop creations. That and overpriced fermented grape juice.

 

Will do. I'll take some tonight.

 

Thought the same thing when I got mine...haha....

 

hm I like the chain bottle opener.

 

cool setup you got there, i want to put a kegerator in the basement and run a line up into my kitchen and drill a hole in the sink and install the tap there, that way i don't have to deal with drips.

 

Yeah but then you will have warm nasty beer sitting in the line. Might get clogged up or start growing stuff if you let it sit there. I guess you would just have to drink more offen.

 

yeah i've been researching this a little bit, they sell refigerated lines and insulated lines. others have just suggested run the beer a few seconds and it will be cold and clean but we shall see. it's only about 15' the way i'm imagining it.

 

When you make a comment like that you best be right...but you are wrong on the reason for the caps, but nice try.

 

Well, they probably do assist in stopping rust (though the studs are coated), but I think its more for protecting the threads from getting messed up from impact with something else, like the ground if you drop them like I did.

 

I knew that they could be taken off at least I didn't sit there very long to think about the purpose of them though, my apologies.

 

Mach - you can run the line upstairs into the kitchen, then run it through a copper coil in the fridge. That way it may be warm in the line between pours, but it will pass through the heat exchanger in the fridge and be cold on the pour. A good friend of mine runs his that way. His kitchen tap basically comes out of the side of the kitchen fridge. The way his kitchen is oriented, the fridge is in a cabinet, and he has counter space next to it. So the line comes up from the basement, into the heat exchanger (copper coil in a bucket of water in the bottom salad drawer), then out the side of the fridge through the cabinet out the tap. I didn't think to get a picture of it when I was there tonight.

Edit - obviously, the salad drawer can no longer hold salad, and isn't opened easily. But it works well. Even in summertime (they don't have AC) the beer comes out cold.

New beer fridge thread in BS area, see that for more pics.

 

Im guessing as long as the lines stay full, the beer inside cant really go bad (well, no faster, or not much faster than in a can) since the beer is in a copper pipe, and is shielded from air from the end of the line by more beer. Beer doesnt mind being warm as long as there isnt air. I may have to make me something like this. I wonder if I can get Abita in a keg... Purple Haze So good it makes me cry.

Oh god, I do feel like crying. Id dying for a Purple Haze, but no stores carrying it are open right now. Anybody else drink any Abita brews? Some of the best beers around imo.

 

Beer is in fact temperature sensitive. Not as sensitive as it is to oxygen, and to light, but it is temp sensitive. Ideally the beer you buy has been refrigerated from the time it left the brewery until the time you buy it.

If it's kept on tap, in the dark, refrigerated, yes it can last a long time. My stout's been in the fridge since Jan 2008, the IPA since October, the honey wheat since July.

 

Well yeah, but I meant for short times. I doubt it being room temp in the lines for a day or two would hurt too much. First glass might not be quite as fresh as the second, but who cares.

 

The caps are there to prevent either paint or rubber from the insert molding process from getting on the threads. nice try everyone.

 

seriously, who give a flying **** what those caps are for anyway? They are just there and then you pull them off and they are done.

 

15' of wasted beer? My god man. There are starving children in Africa. I was offended that you were wasting drips. Now you are talking about pouring perfectly good beer down the sink!

Aaaagh!

It must be some horrible mass market crap you drink. All that can go down the sink as far as I'm concerned.

 

The other thing to consider is the CO2 pressure. I'm assuming in this setup the keg is in the basement. So you're going to have let's say 8' of lift in the line. Your CO2 pressure in the keg will need to be upped accordingly to maintain flow rates at the faucet. If your line is uninsulated, as the beer warms your CO2 is going to come out of solution. With the heat exchanger in the fridge much of that CO2 will go back into solution before it comes out of the faucet, but it'll still be overpressurized a bit until the cold beer flows all the way through. Without the heat exchanger, that first glass will be blowing beer foam.

An option here is to run a custom CO2 / NI gas mix instead of straight CO2. That will allow you to run a higher pressure to lift the beer and will result in the proper CO2 level at the faucet.

Take, for example, this guy. He's got a swank setup but it still blows foam: Effect of lift on pressure settings - Keg Beer Dispensing Discussion Forum - Kegerator