A seriously early start for us over here at Shed Beer with this event, it was very cold and very dark while we were delivering mobile event bars for the Christmas market event in Poulton Le Fylde.
We were really pleased to be involved though and the bars looked great, and worked flawlessly, throughout. They can be testing environments for beer dispense equipment but we use the best kit available when we build these event bars and, whilst they can look a bit quirky – we like to think of them as rustic – we always have complete confidence that they will work as they should.
These ones were at separate venues. Thyme – a really nice restaurant – wanted an outside bar for the weekend and Marvin’s the funky bar down the Breck were right in the square in front of the stage.
We can configure these event bars with however many products the customer wants, two and four respectively for these ones, but if you want ten or twenty we can deliver that setup as well.
Really pleased over here at Shed Beer to be brewing at the Thatched in Poulton Le Fylde, one of the big names in cask beer on the Fylde Coast.
We started in November with a Citra that went really well but was quite a big hitter at 5.6% ABV. The Chinook we dialled down a little to 5.1% and this was much more appraochable, a really fresh tasting typical Chinook profile; piney and spicy.
The intention is to continue a single hop series so we will do a Cascade next and then an Amarillo, probably followed by a real hop bomb combining all of those hops in massive dry hop charges; something to look forward to!
Beer gas for home brewers and for dispense within home bars has become something of an issue in some areas and, as it happens, the Fylde Coast where we are is one of those areas.
Beer gas is kind of the under appreciated component in home bars or home brewing setups but when we get down to it it’s a critical component. Without gas all of the home bars we install, every single one of them, stops dispensing beer. Similarly, if you carbonate beer in your brewing setup as we do over here in’t shed, or ferment under pressure as some do, then without CO2 your process comes to a halt.
As ever with these problems we’ve looked for a solution and whilst we don’t always find a solution we have in this case; we’ve done a deal with Hobby Brew and are now their appointed agent for beer gas on the Fylde Coast and surrounding area. We can supply C02, 30/70 and 60/40 beer gas.
The deal is a £70 bottle deposit with refills (cylinder exchanges actually) priced ay £36 for mixed gas and £35 for CO2.
This is definitely a step away from finding a bottle on Freebay and then exchanging it for a full with the gas company or getting a cylinder from a pal who has a pub, we get that completely, but it is a guarantee of supply locally and you won’t be stuck for beer gas.
We supply and fit home bar equipment across the Fylde Coast. If you want one beer or half a dozen beers on your home bar we can help.
Single Moretti
Cracking Home Bar
Moretti, San Miguel and Stella
I’m generally reluctant to share images of people’s private spaces but there’s some amazing creativity out there. These jobs are usually the same setup, a two product cooler with whatever product font the customer specifies and new gauges throughout. Sometimes they are new fonts, other times we might have some really nice used ones and we can adjust the price according to what we fit.
Badges can be a little bit bonkers so those Moretti ones can cost £25 if they need to be bought separately! We can usually supply those from stock though at no extra charge.
The expensive item is the cooler. Our ‘go to’ is the new two product hydrocarbon unit for home bar installs. These are compact, so perfect in a home bar setting where space is normally at a premium, and amazingly efficient at getting down to temperature. The downside of these is the lead time, the manufacturer is currently giving us a lead time of 12 weeks which is an awful long time to wait. Our workaround for that is to install one of our rental units and switch it out when the new cooler arrives; again we never look to charge for that.
We always specify a two product cooler even when the customer is only looking for a single product setup for their home bar. There are a couple of very good reasons for this. Firstly, the single product unit only develops 2.2kg of ice whereas the two out produces 5kg. A 5kg ice bank is going to keep up with most home bar settings, 2.2kg might start to struggle with prolonged use or warm weather. It’s also future proofing; it’s very simple to add a second product to your home bar if the cooler has a second coil.
There’s no compromise right through our home bar setups. We always fit secondary regulators as well as primaries, we never fit used regulators, and we warranty everything for 12 months.
If the customer is trying to work to a price then we will try to work with them, if we have a good used cooler available for instance, but even when we fit a used cooler we put a 12 month warranty on it ourselves.
Price wise, we are looking at £1200 or so for a full home bar setup. There are cheaper options out there and if price is your only criteria then we are probably not the right supplier for you. If you want a local company that will do what they say they’re going to do and will stand behind their work then maybe that’s us.
We will add to this as we think of problems we can solve!
We get very distressed over bad beer over here in’t shed. Probably not as distressed as you if it’s your bar that’s serving the bad beer but pretty close; we take it very personally. As a ‘for instance’, my phone rang this evening during my sacrosanct couch hour; it was a beer customer in distress though and as the fifth emergency service I just couldn’t ignore it. The problem in this instance was flat beer, which upsets us as much as it upsets you, so what might be the cause? More importantly, what might be the solution?
So; basic checks:
Is there beer in the keg?I know, sorry…
Is there gas in the cylinder?If the gas runs out and you carry on dispensing the system will use whatever gas it can find to put the beer through the tap. It will use the gas in the headspace of the keg and then the gas in solution will try to equalize… Sorry – got all technical there for a moment. Make sure there’s gas and it’s turned on
Are you using the right gas?Most beers will dispense very happily under 60/40. The flip side to that is many, many beers will go bonkers and turn into a foamy pain in the arse under 30/70 and it’s very easy to confuse the two gases. Check which gas your beer needs and use the apporopriate one.
Are there any restrictions?Check for kinks in any pipes, particularly around the keg coupler, to make sure that gas is getting into the keg
Gas Pressure?For mixed gas we are looking for 25psi minimum and 35-40psi maximum at the secondary regulator. for us trying to troubleshoot home bars we have to accept that we are up against ambient temperatures and that goes for the gas too. The gas might be up and down a bit if it’s baking hot where it’s stored so do expect some fluctuations.
Has the regulator gone to Funky Town?I got a call out to one of our own mobile bars which was dispensing really slowly. We use new regulators in all our mobile bar setups, this one still had the protective film on the gauges, but it was clearly doing something odd. The primary dial was making a strange little ‘ticking’ movement and the only way I could get it to dispense was stay on site and adjust it up and down as needed. For me there are no serviceable parts on beer gas regulators so this needed replacing; beer gas regulators can fail so be suspicous of them.
Hygiene?Far, far, far and away (not where Shrek lives – not that far away) the most common cause of flat beer is something that needs cleaning and it’s usually either glasses or beer lines. People find it a tricky concept to buy into but yeast particles love beer lines, shine a torch through them and see for yourself, and glasses washed but not rinsed are clean but not really beer clean. Dishwashers do a very good job of cleaning glasses but the very best thing you can do for them is a rinse under a hot tap.
In our instance here it was glasses. I was fairly convinced it was when I set off so I took one of my own with me. When we wash glasses it’s hard to believe that they can be the cause of any problem – they’re clean right? – when we’re troubleshooting our home bars but the truth is – boring science bit here about detergent film buildup that I don’t totally understand myself – that washing up liquid and beer don’t play well together.
So you want to put a bar in at home? Well, we’ve done loads of home bar setups so can help with that. There’s a short video here with the critical dimensions so that deals with the space issue. The key dimensions are width, depth (as in front to back) and height.
Depth wise we always think of 600mm as being about right. That’s enough to fit the cooler in with some breathing space around it and fit kegs in as well if that’s what you want. It’s convenient too if you want to use regular worktop as your bar top.
Width wise we would be thinking a bare minimum of one metre, which would accommodate the cooler and gas bottle, and one and a half metres if you want to fit a keg under there as well. We do build our own mobile units to a metre and they work just fine, we just have to put the keg separate from the bar is all.
This is our two product event bar and as can be seen from the pictures there’s enough room to fit the gas bottle, beer cooler, beer gas regulators and all the associated pipe work. With these ones we would leave the kegs outside and run cooling jackets off the recirculation pump in the cooler. We also run cold water through the python and up into the font from the same source; there’s plenty of cooling going on in this setup.
The headroom in this one is a metre, which gives us plenty of space for the gas bottle.
If you’re building a home bar then this is the exact same setup that we would use and / or recommend. You may want a single or double font rather than this triple but all of the dimensions and equipment are the same. These coolers have four cooling loops but we would only ever use two at any one time so a cooler with two loops wil be just fine for one or two products in your home bar setup; they’re just a touch smaller physically.
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
These bars are all driven by gas, there’s no need for any motors. We use 60/40 – 60% carbon dioxide (CO2) and 40% nitrogen – and find that 25psi usually does the trick. There’s lots of arguments about gas pressures and there is some very clever maths around length of pipe run and all that guff. At our level, all we need to do is understand what works and for us that’s 25psi of top pressure and no real issue going up or down by a few PSI to get the balance right.
We do use a secondary regulator per product in all our event bars and home bar setups, which some might see as a slight bit of overkill, but it does give complete control over each product and for what a secondary regulator costs it’s not really worth trying to save a few quid.
At the bottle, we need a primary regulator. If you’re tempted to use a welding regulator because you can’t see the difference or there’s one going cheap please, please, don’t. The gas in those bottles is stored at over 800psi and the beer kegs are not rated to 800psi. Regulators are not cheap, think £75 or so, but they are an absolutely critical component and not a place to try and save money.
It’s quite possible to dispense beer with CO2, we do it ourselves here in the brewshed and have seen plenty of home bar setups using CO2. Dispensing with CO2 is a great compromise if you’re a brewer and want to carbonate your beer as well. If you’re designing your home bar from scratch though mixed gas is the way to go.
We will do another post on the gas setup itself, in terms of where the pipes go etc., if you have any questions around any of this or any other aspect of your home bar setup do drop us a message; we’re always (usually!) happy to talk beer.
Bar hire starts from £125 for a weekend, message us here for specific prices and availability.
Whatever size function you’re arranging we have a bar for that. Our bars can handle anything from one to five products giving you cold beer on tap whatever event you are hosting.
We can supply single or double product Beer Sheds, rustic bars with two or three products and full size outdoor bars with up to five beers. These are complete stand alone units that need nothing more than a single electric socket. We deliver, test, demonstrate and remove the bar once your function is over. The only consumable is beer gas and we supply that for free.
These bigger units are typically 1.5 metres long and very heavy so we need to bear that size and weight in mind when siting them.
Outdoor Event Bar
Event Bar 4 Products
Event Bar Beer Cooler
Outdoor Bar 5 Products
Outdoor Bar Gas Setup
Outdoor Bar 5 Products
We can supply smaller units, these ones are typically one metre long and very easy to move into situ. The coolers for these ones are shelf coolers with four outlets which we run the beer through twice to make sure it’s served sufficiently chilled.
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
Event Bar 2 Product
…and then there’s our Beer Sheds. These are fully functioning with full size coolers using pub gas and they deliver beer exactly as you would expect it to be; nothing is compromised here!
Beer Shed Single Product
Beer Shed Parade!
Beer Shed Cooling
Beer Shed for Cask
Beer Shed
Beer Shed
If your event is outdoors we also have a selection of gazebos for hire. We typically use 3x3mt or 2.5×2.5mt heavy duty ‘popup’ type gazebos which are easy to put up and take down.
Bar hire prices start from £125 for the weekend, message for specific price and availability.
A short video on clarity in beer and how we achieve it over here in’t shed.
Traditionally, beer clarity was achieved using isnglass which is a fish derived product. These days we use an ethical, silica based, fining product called Brausol.
It looks like parties and events are going to be possible this year (yay!) and we’ve been busy developing our mobile bars so that we can help with these functions.
Beer Shed
Beer Shed
Beer Shed
These are our own unique Beer Sheds, stand alone units that we simply wheel into situ and plug in. We have a selection of our own beers and ciders plus access to national brewer lists so we can usually find a something to suit. These will work with beers, lagers, ciders and pretty much anything inbetween!
We generally do full weekend hire but can accommodate most needs, we have plenty of availability but that changes as the diary fills up so message us to enquire about dates and prices. Rental is usually £125 for the weekend plus whatever products you want. The only consumable is beer gas and we supply that so there are no hidden costs.
We are adding products as and when we can source them. Supplies are a little tricky at the moment but we are searching far and wide for deals. This week we’ve added sodium metabisulphite in 200gm packs.
As you will know as a brewer sodium metabisulphite is what Campden tablets are made of, it’s a water treatment that we use to drive off chlorine/chloramine but also has some real use as a cleaning/sterilising agent.
Being a chemical though, it does come with a safety datasheet and we are making this available as a download here:
