Portable Beer Bar

[Peter Meacham]

Looking for some design ideas for a portable/mobile beer bar to be set up at a wedding in July.

Something with a counter top that would accommodate two beer dispensing towers with faucets and be able to hide the keg(s), hoses, etc

I have seen portable bars on line, such as on eBay, that fold up – but they are made more for mixed drinks rather than beer (no towers).

Anyone seen some ideas in their travels that you could share pls?

Maybe even something in a western theme or …

Thanks for any inputs, Pete

[Ryan Mooney]

Probably late, but there are a couple of practical issues here you should pay attention to:

- Understand pressure balance: http://www.micromatic.com/direct-dra...m-aid-121.html this will be important for getting a good pour and may help you decide on the type of config you want.
- minimize or preferably eliminate the distance from the cold area to the taps. If you do towers, you would want to recirculate cold air up them. An open bottom box (insulated of course) has better airflow to the keg storage chamber and you can mount the taps right to the side of it.
- Check out the "collar" type kegerators (http://getaclue.org/~ryan/beer-freezer/ is mine) for some ideas - these are great for small pony kegs or cornelius kegs, but - unless you're built like hercules - don't work so well for regular 1/2 barrel kegs (try lifting 160 lbs shoulder high and then lowering it carefully over a belly button high wall and you'll see what I mean). Side entry is key for large kegs. Anything like that is probably impractical for a portable setup though.

Consider buying either a coil or cold plate style jockey box and then hiding it behind a facade (or build a custom cooler box out of wood, lined with fiberglass/epoxy to replace the plastic cooler). This could then be put on top of a portable table with trim (or heck drop cloths) hiding the front.

I have the two coil jockey box from more beer:
http://morebeer.com/search/102233/be...s_Jockey_Boxes
This eliminates the need to cool the whole keg setup (stick the kegs in a tub of ice under the table and run the beverae line up into the cooling box on top of the table). For jockey boxes you have basically two options:
- coils like the morebeer setup. These more reliably cool the system (reasons below), but because of the long line length are more prone to foaming problems. I drop the pressure until the beer pretty much won't pour and then _very_ slowly increase it until I get the pour I want. It still foams.
- cold plates like those available from: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/keggi...ispensing.html These actually cool better when they are working and tend to foam less, but have a problem of "ice bridges" forming over the plate so you have to occasionally reach into the box and break up the ice.

If you go with a coil, go with the longest biggest coil you can (recommend the morebeer one). For plates, I haven't tried a lot but the midwestsupplies is reasonably priced and the all look similar.

Do get a good line cleaning kit (pump, BLC caustic, five star no rinse) and flush and clean the lines as soon as practical after using. Once funk starts growing in long coils or convoluted plates its a bear to get out.