Hi all. I'm new to the home bar scene. Just bought a house and it had a home bar setup in the garden in a summer house. There's a cornelius maxi 210 with two taps. At the moment the cooler isn't producing an ice bank. And the lager is coming out fairly frothy. I have downloaded a manual and it says it could be a few things : 1) 2flow needs replacing 2) water level could be low 3)faulty ice bank thermostat 1 should be easy enough if I can get hold of some 2 flow solution. 2 again should be easy enough but there's no instructions as to how much water it should hold. And 3 I have no idea how to check. Any help/advice would be great Thanks Adam Wales, UK.
I'm by no means an expert with this unit, never seen it and probably never will. It is a flash chiller, and they mostly answer the question very few have. But not being an expert isn't going to stop me. I do know enough to be dangerous, even from 3,000 miles. The flash chiller will lower the dispense temp of room temperature beer. So you must be pouring pasteurized beer. Otherwise the beer will spoil. Now is a good time to consider buying a kegerator, which answers the question. Flash chillers are for shitty bars or restaurants with no space for kegs and shouldn't be serving draft beer anyway. They can also do this stupid trick of freezing the outside of a draft tower with a shell of ice. Never seen that? Because nobody cares to have ice on a draft tower. Stupid. These units use glycol for cooling. The beer passes through a long coil submerged in cold glycol. The length of the coil and the temp of the glycol bath and beer temp determine the rate of heat removal. Simple. 2Flow appears to be a brand, or premixed solution. Not familiar. But any USP* food grade glycol will work. 2 parts water 1 part glycol will work. That will give you a freeze temp well below 0C. The bath set temp is going to be the tricky part, since it is dependent on the size of the bath and the length of the internal beer coil. You want beer to pour at 38F, which... hold on...3.3333333C. We will say 3 degrees Celsius. Remember that the glycol must be liquid well below the thermostat set point, because the cooling coils will be well below 0C, and will freeze the glycol that is in contact with the cold coil. So don't mix it for a 0C freeze point, or it will freeze. So replace the glycol bath. You can get glycol at a HVAC supply for contractors. Clean the beer lines. Clean the entire system, faucets, everything. DONT turn the unit on until you have tapped the kegs. If you do, you will freeze the beer as soon as the kegs are tapped. Any water used to flush the system will freeze. First tap, pour some, then turn it. Pour and adjust until you are getting 3C pours at the glass. If the unit is chilling correctly it should Flash Chill, as in the beer will always come out cold, all day, continually. Good luck. *You'll have to find the EU equivalent of "USP". Edit, Or the better option is to sell it and buy a kegerator.
Thanks for the info. The problem with getting a kegerator is they are £1000+ a keg and my maxi does 2 lines and they are about £500. Even if It needs a service it's still a lot cheaper.
