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Free Cold Plate. Will It Work?
My neighbor used to work for Coca-Cola, and was going to throw out this old soda cold plate.
He asked my if I could use it. So, can it be used for homebrew?
The inlet & outlets seem pretty small, 3/16" I.D. But there are six of them. I was thinking I could hook them up in pairs & do 3 kegs, or in triples, & do two kegs.
Anyway, please take a look & tell me what you think I can do with this setup.
The plate assembly
Close up of connector from keg to plate
The CO2 hook up
Of course, I would replace the soda dispenser with beer faucets.
You got yourself a goldmine there. JOCKEY BOX! Get a cooler big enough to fit the plate, Install faucet(s) and you have a portable kegerator. Those are pin lock QDs, so you would need a pin lock corny, or you could put a set of in-line QD's and switch off to a sanke coupler and run a commercial sanke keg off it. I would soak everything in a PBW for awhile, and maybe run some PBW or BLC through the plate, with some rinse after that. BTW 3/16" is standard for bevline and gives the proper restriction for foam control, usually at 6 feet per line, but there are charts to get it exact if you are a perfectionist. Make sure to get bevline too, it is less permeable and thicker walled than standard tubing you may find at the home cheapo.
My jockey box has a coil system in it, kinda like an IC, those cold plates are much better.
Or you could just throw the whole thing into a fridge run the bev lines from 6 kegs into the fridge through the plate, and back out of either 6 faucets or better yet, keep the gun and you could dispense 6 beers from the gun. You may have to resnake some 3/16" bevline through 6 feet per line is about right, but that would be pretty cool too. You could store all the hardware in the fridge, and have 6 kegs (which would never normally fit inside) outside for easy access. Cosmetically it may need some thought, but having a soda gun coming out of a fridge, dispensing 6 kegs of homebrew would be freakin sweet!
Or you could conceal all of that behind/under a bar, and pour off the gun without anything in sight...
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I think Thirsty is in love with your plate chiller.
I have to admit a bit of envy as well.
Congrats on the pick-up my friend.
brewchez wrote:
I think Thirsty is in love with your plate chiller.
.
That is impossible, 3/16" inlets is way too small for that no matter how much keg lube is used.
I wear a size 12 shoe.
Far F&*%ing out!!! 
. I'm on it.
Now, I have a question or two about the outlets. They are much smaller ID than the inlet.
I'm going out and disassemble one, take a pic, and measure the ID.
Back in a flash. 
Ok, the inlet side is 3/16" ID with the hose clamped on the outside of the fitting. Like this-
BUT - On the outlet side there is a fitting that reduces the ID to about half, let's say 3/32" 
So, the outlet can handle roughly 25% the volume of the inlet. Doesn't seem right.
I think I should replace the outlet with the same kind of fittings as the inlet, go to standard beer faucets, and hold on to the Coke dispenser thingy, or put it on e-bay.
Now if only my newly appreciated neighbor has access to kegs to go with it, hell, maybe he's got this keg lube stuff too. Now I wear a size 9-1/2, but 3/16", but, damn that's small.
Brewski wrote:
Ok, the inlet side is 3/16" ID with the hose clamped on the outside of the fitting. Like this-
BUT - On the outlet side there is a fitting that reduces the ID to about half, let's say 3/32"
So, the outlet can handle roughly 25% the volume of the inlet. Doesn't seem right.
I think I should replace the outlet with the same kind of fittings as the inlet, go to standard beer faucets,
you may want to rethink changing the outlet orifice. I run my mercedes on veg oil. in order to run on high ratio veg oil or pure veg you need to set up a heated fuel circuit. usually you use the engine's water jacket as your heat source and a dual plate heat exchanger to transfer the engine heat to the fuel. the second circuit has your cold veg oil that needs to be heated prior to combustion. (same principle as an air conditioner, radiator, heater core...)
this old school soda dispenser is a great score and functions in much the same, the plate acts as a heat exchanger, except that the plate absorbs heat from the beer. the smaller outflow orifice is probably to limit the exchange rate of the beer through the cold block. since this is a single pass scenario, if you flow the beer across the cooling plate too fast it doesn't have time to chill properly. I suspect the small orifice is to slow down the flow rate and to cause turbulence/ mixing. before you spend the money on new fittings you might want to see if the original set-up will meet your stein filling demands.
I am a bit new to the brew scene, this is my first post on this forum and I still use malt extract and bottle my beers so you can disregard my comment if you wish...
Hey, anyone out there using a cold plate. What kind of fittings do you use on the outlet side??
Bringing this back up, I'm getting closer to kegging and starting to buy fittings.
I doubt that I will ever have a need for 6 kegs at one time, very possibly three.
So, does it make sense, and will it work, to combine two inlets to one keg, and of course combine the same two outlets into one faucet?
Because of the distance your beer is traveling, you will have to play around a little to get the right balance to your system. Temp, restrictiom, and distance all play factors to how your beer pours. Most home draft systems work off of 6 feet of 3/16" bevline and carb and pour 10-12psi. Your set up will be unique, however you would I think want to keep it as close to this standard as possible. Who knows how much distance and at what restriction is your beer passing through the plate at. So I would KISS and just use 1 inlet and 1 outlet to each faucet, Use more bevline than you think you nay need, then if you are not getting enough carb or head, play a little with the pressure, if you feel you are going too high (16+ #s) then trim a little bevline off, after having 1 line hooked up for a week or so, you can probably get a good guage on things and add the other 2 (or 5)
You may think you only want 3 lines now, but just wait...just wait...it will be maxxed soon enough!
Actually, I'm only going to use the cold plate in a jockey box. The fridge I'm setting up only has room for 2 cornys & a 5# CO2 tank. Sorry, no room in the house for another fridge, no basement, & detached, unheated garage/shop.
But then, ya know, maybe someday there could be an event where I bring a 6-faucet jockey box & a MIRACLE OCCURS, five other kegs materialize out of thin air.
Could happen.
Brewski wrote:
The fridge I'm setting up only has room for 2 cornys & a 5# CO2 tank.
Could you squeeze another corny in there if your CO2 tank wason the outside? My old kegerator had this problem and I installed a gas bulkhead that goes right through the side wall, and your line plugs into it, allowing the tank to be external. Just trying to maximize your draft selection.
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