Help! What is this?!?

Welcome to the BA site, Ryunemaoami. To post pictures in a forum thread you must use a third party hosting site such as imgur.com. Upload your pic there, copy the direct link of the pic to your clipboard, then use the image icon on the edit bar above to insert the pic into a post. Busy work, yes, but it's the only way.

 

Looks like a Beertender. Marketed by Krups and Heineken. It uses proprietary mini kegs. They have been around for a while and google shows a few different varieties or updated versions. This might be one of the previous models as far as I can tell.
The flow control faucet is interesting.

We do not have them here in the States.
This is my best guess.
Cheers

 

Do you have more pictures of the inside? You mention you inherited it, do you have more details on it? Is this something someone purchased or built? The digital control on the front is Korean. If you search on the model number it comes up with about 3 sites that have it on auction sites. Is the beer line a long coil in the inside like a jockey box?

 

I don't know exactly what it is, maybe someone here who knows more about brewing might if its related to that. If it looks like you put water/ice in there and then the beer line runs through it to get cooled then my first inclination is that its some sort of Jockey Box. Never seen one that has a refrigeration unit built in so perhaps its something else. Are there any other markings or model numbers anywhere else? So far I've only seen the control unit which is an obscure Korean company. I'm not an expert on these things like others on there so I'm just trying to sleuth a bit.

 

Oh. Ok. So with the new pic we have this. And it only took 2 guesses.

Sort of a hybrid jockey box/glycol chiller. Known as a Flash Chiller. Google flash chiller for more info and pics. They can be useful in very limited situations behind a bar.

The copper coil is a loop for chilling a glycol bath. The coils sit inside the tub filled with glycol/water solution. This is how a glycol chiller works, and a motor and pump assembly circulates the solution within the trunk line. This keeps the beer cold from the walk in cooler to the remote faucets. Only a flash chiller does not have the pump because it is not intended for chilling a trunk line. It just has a bath of cold glycol solution. (I will add that I have had the very unpleasant task of sticking my arm into cold glycol. At 29F you can last maybe 30 seconds before the pain is pretty much unbearable).

This unit has an additional stainless steel coil in the bath which would be for the beer to flow through. Or any beverage. So the beer is cooled with glycol instead of ice. The addition of the faucet is unique.

This thing is the answer to a problem nobody asked. Using ice is not hard and if you are going to be using electricity you may as well just use a kegerator.

There is also no way to keep the keg cold which is a requirement for unpasteurized kegs and a real good idea for pasteurized beer as well.

Flash chillers can be used for wine and are sometimes forced into service if the bar has no space or unwilling to pay for a draft system. They can be used to drop the beverage temperature at the point of dispense, but if you need to use this then you do need to fix the problem at the source, eg the walk in cooler (and this is not one of those flash chillers in any event).

Finally, flash chillers are used to provide a coating of ice on certain draft towers. This is apparently an appealing marketing scheme for bar owners who cater to the dumbest beer drinkers on planet earth and their use should result in a few weeks of jail for all involved. Because if you like ice on your draft tower you are too stupid for general society.

Cheers

 

What about frost? The same or is there a loophole?

 

Not sure what you are asking. Can you expand?

 

Ice is not frost. As in frosty. Not icy.