Beer cellar refrigeration is an important part of your beer dispensing system. In an ideal world all beer cellars would have cellar cooling, providing as it does a consistent controlled environment for all your beers.

For new businesses the initial installation costs of cellar refrigeration can be quite expensive. This in recent financially strapped times has seen some pubs and bars not bothering to have it installed. Long term this does not make economic sense as the benefits of cellar cooling are worth having for any businesses. An average cellar cooler installation may cost you between £2000 and £3000 pounds depending on the type and size of cellar you have. Long term this could be money well spent.

If you are lucky enough to have existing cellar cooling then you will already be aware of the benefits. Product consistency being the primary one. Most brewers recommend you have cooling whether it be for keg or cask beers. I would suggest that to guarantee quality cask beers you must have cellar cooling. Some pubs I know have no cooling but are blessed with deep stone or brick cellars and have a constant 52-53 Fahrenheit temperature through out the year, sadly most uncooled cellars are a lot warmer than that. An important but overlooked piece of kit in your cellar is a thermometer, without it how do you know how cold your cellar is. You should as a matter of course check your cellar temperature every day. If you haven’t got a thermometer then you need to get one.

With Spring now upon us this is a good time to have your existing cellar cooling checked over, avoiding possible breakdowns in Summer when you most need it. The cost of a service call could save you a lot of money. Check out our list of local refrigeration contractors for an engineer near you.

Related posts:

1. Common problems with Cask beer dispense
2. Credit Crunch Cost Cutting for Pubs
3. Buying beer cheaper on the open market?

“I remember the Pods”.

No I don’t mean the escape pods from Star Trek or the ipod. I refer to the object that sends shudders down the backs of Landlords and sends bar staff scurrying for mops and buckets.

Away from the prying eyes of customers but in full view of everyone else we have the pods which seem to get bigger and take up more space every time you look at them, they would be more at home on the set of the Scorpion King.

I don’t mean those untidy things that used to fit so neatly into the bottom shelf, screaming at you to fill with water or change a fan motor or recirc pump.

How it is now

No I refer to this cutting edge stuff, these wonderful objects are so neat and compact they can be fitted in any position and tucked well out of the way, if only.

The problem with this type of pod as the picture shows an engineer can install one of these albeit very neatly, but then along comes another to install one or two around the initial installation; time is not allocated to move or reinstall the first one to a better position to make room, so the space under the bar then begins to look like a pigs breakfast.

The second generation or later pods are now hopefully well lagged, gone are the days when you expected to see Kevin Costner climb out with gills, webbed hands and feet, then it was condensation fonts above the bar, and “Water World” below.

The principal behind the pod was sound however the design has shown it to be flawed in practice, it has turned simple bar installs into a mess, the blame doesn’t really lie with anyone in particular, the sooner different sizes of the extra cold remote are introduced in some measure the better. Bars can then return to just fonts and pythons behind the bar. So the basic principal of no coolers at all behind the bar can be maintained. but this would mean more pythons to run from the cellar, but then that’s a story for another day.

Related posts:

1. Cask beer…I wish I had the space (Vertical Stillage)