We have beer pipe listed in a couple of spots on the webshop – Here and Here – but they don’t really cover the complete picture so…
Most beer pipe is 3/8 and we have miles of it. Some pipe is 5/16 so often out of the back of taps or fonts you may find 5/16 beer pipe. Also, the fittings on some coolers are 5/16 as well so the size itself is not unusual but it catches plenty of people out because it isn’t always obvious from first glance that it’s a slightly quirky size. It’s relatively normal stuff in the industry though and we always have a supply.
The ‘microbore’ beer pipe that we see, the really small bore stuff, is 3/16 and is very common. We rarely use it in more than two metre sections but it is a critical item which, again, we have loads of in stock always.
Beer gas pipe is always 3/8 and is colour coded. We don’t always have all the colours but we always have some beer gas pipe available.
The other size that’s of interest on the beer dispense side is 1/2 (half inch). This is the common size for beer engines or hand pumps. Again, it’s something we keep a good supply of. We’ve never quite figured out why we might use braided or non braided so tend not to worry too much about that aspect; we will use and supply whatever we have in stock.
We keep python as well, often offcuts from jobs but we usually have some around if that’s what you’re looking for.
If you can’t see what you need on the webshop it doesn’t mean that we don’ have it neccessarily; always worth dropping us a message.
Event season 2022 is on the horizon now and it looks – at last! – like we may get a clear run at the whole socialising thing this year which will be very, very welcome for many of us.
We’ve polished our mobile and event bar offering over the last couple of years and can now supply bars for pretty much any size of event or party. We’ve supplied single product setups installed temporarily into people’s homes for housewarming parties, multiple product bars for outdoor events like Christmas markets, and multiple bars for beer festivals.
We can supply gazebos for outdoor events if you need them, we can supply beer and cider if you need it or supply your own; we don’t mind either way.
If you’re having an event and want a bar we can tailor a package to suit.
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.
