OK. No such thing as a good time. I keep the keezer set just above freezing, rather than serving temp, to better preserve the beer. With 6 different kegs in there, I noticed that the actual temp is 47F, although the Ranco controller is set to 34. The freezer is an old Philco model, so probably about ready to be discarded. Just bad timing to have so much beer on hand during a freezer failure. The failure is coincidental with the arrival a some new equipment I would like to try. But where would I go with the beer? Back to bottling? Bad timing.
Whats wrong with 47f? Thats not too far off my serving temp at 45f Too cold and you have to let it warm up to open the flavor up
Some bad mo-jo floating around . . . I just took my keezer off life support . . . I speak of it in the past tense now. Fortunately I had room for four kegs in my ferm fridge and two 3 gallon'ers fit in the back-up ferm fridge. And to think, some people made fun of me for keeping a back-up. Lowe's had the same model (from 14 years ago) on sale, so I bit the bullet. Now I get to experience drilling holes in a new appliance.
Mine died about two weeks before a wedding that I brewed for. Beer wasn't carbed yet. Had to go out the next day to buy a new one. For my troubles, I was paid $200. Spent about $850...
My keezer had been working intermittently for a couple weeks and mostly not at all the past couple. I moved my beer to a different fridge last night and am also calling mine dead. I thought cooling appliances were supposed to die in the summer?
Craigslist, I had an old icebox that the auto defrost element went out in. This was before I got into drinking good beer and deciding to look into home brewing. Great compressor, just froze up. Wish I wouldn't have given it away to the guys that run up and down the street the night before trash pickup
@ryane -- I recognize that 47 is good serving temp, but you miss the point. I keep my keezer set at 34 and it is no longer holding the temperature. That's a fail. In fact, because I had it set at 34 and it started to fail, it apparently had been working extra hard for-I-do-not-know-how-long, trying to drive the temp down to 34. The exterior base of the unit feels like it is probably about 110 degrees, and that cannot be a good sign. FWIW I keep the temp set low because lower temps will help preserve beer longer, and it has been taking me a long time to kick the kegs. Yes, I get that warmer temps allows beers to "open up" in terms of olfaction and gustation, but there is also a tactile sense to consider. That first gulp of cold beer is pleasurable in its own way. The beer will warm up in my glass, and I can enjoy it in other ways, but it will not get colder in the glass. The only way to experience the initial frosty blast is to start cold But apparently I must be denied this experience, woe is me.
Why is everyone so panicky about pulling kegs out of the keezer for a couple of weeks until you get a new unit? It's not ideal, but it's not worth throwing groceries out over.
Have u checked the settings on your controller, I had a power bump reset some parameters in mine once that caused it to cycle the freezer too often and caused the problem your having. I unplugged the unit , put a fan on it to let it cool and plugged it directly into the wall, about two hours later it qas ice cold inside. That led me to start looking at the controller
This is sort of on the lines of what ryane is speaking of, but any mods to the thermostat that you can find online? If it's pretty old then maybe not.. Is your keezer set to the lowest temp setting possible? I was having problems with my kegerator being too warm. I found a good resource online for my brand and was able to bring it down about another 10 degrees from where it was, with just a simple turning of a screw inside the thermostat. 47 degrees is definitely a good temp to drink your beer, because the flavors really come out. Serving it that warm will be a different issue, with foam being a big problem. Not good to hear at all, and hope you get it all figured out man!
Could be a coinkydink, but the only freezer I've had that failed, was hooked up to a temp controller. Too bad they don't make chest refers, because mine is almost always at 37*F anyway.
That depends on the time of year! Now? They'd be fine, probably for a long time. My old freezer died mid-summer, and it was in a detached garage with no AC. I had 11 kegs in there at the time. I moved what I could into a standard kitchen fridge I keep out there and ordered a new freezer right away. That unit ended up being on backorder for ~ 6 weeks. All told, it was almost 2 months before I got the new one up and running. IIRC, I ended up dumping 8 or 9 kegs (varying degrees of fullness) and starting over because the carbonation had gone wild and 8 weeks of daily temperature swings hadn't been kind. Granted, if they weren't already 'older' and/or almost kicked kegs - I might have hauled them all inside or down to the basement for a bit more temp stability.
