Keg Refrigerator

The keg refrigerator is generally a simple, durable, reliable refrigerator.

It's designed to keep beer cold, but not necessarily to cool warm beer down, so don't be surprised if it seems to take a long time to cool a room temperature keg down to serving temperature.

If the tap on the top of your keg refrigerator doesn't seem to be getting cold, check to be sure there's an air duct/hose connected from somewhere on the evaporator enclosure to the bottom of the tap well.

This is to route cold air up into the well to cool the tap.

Clean the evaporator coil and condenser coil on a regular basis.

I've found evaporator coils blocked with dust, napkins, cellophane wrapping paper, etc, and condenser coils totally plugged with dust, lint, grease, and other debris.

When air flow through either of the coils is restricted, cooling efficiency will drop off, and your keg refrigerator simply won't be able to cool the keg.

When air flow through the condenser coil is completely blocked, the compressor will run with discharge pressures that will shorten its service life, and possibly even break it in a short period of time.

If you own an older R-12 unit and need to convert to one of the new refrigerants, if you're still using the original compressor, R 409a works fine.

I've used a lot of it, and it runs at normal pressures and temperatures, with standard superheat and subcooling.

If you have an R-12 unit and are converting to R 134a after changing out the compressor, be sure to follow the refrigerant and compressor manufacturers' guidelines, and contact the manufacturer of your unit for any additional advice they might have.

If your unit uses a TXV, replace the R-12 TXV with an R 134a TXV of the same capacity.

If your unit uses a cap tube, replace it with the correct size of cap tube for R 134a.

I've found that #4 works well, but I usually have to experiment to get the pressures, superheat, and subcooling in the normal range when the box is about 7° above set point.

You might be interested in taking a look at our System Evaluation Manual, which has a cycle diagram and guidelines on how to evaluate system pressures and temperatures for air conditioning and refrigeration systems.

I hope this page has helped, and please, feel free to contact us with any specific HVAC questions you might have, including questions refrigeration on Guam, or air conditioning on Guam.

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