Taking the following:
- Beer input temp: 8 °C
- Beer output temp: 2 °C
- Fully built ice bank
The theoretical reserve cooling capacity is 1,736 litres of beer, or around 34 no. 50L kegs.
Cooler’s refrigeration system is continuously replenishing the ice as it is being formed. As a rough guide, you can divide the 34 kegs by the build time once the bath reaches 0°C (not the build time from ambient conditions). This will give you an approximate idea of how many kegs per hour the refrigeration units can handle.
For example, if it takes 5 hours for the cooler to build a complete ice bank after the bath reaches 0°C, then the refrigeration system will provide cooling for approximately (34/5) = 7 kegs per hour, very roughly.
Therefore, the cooler’s total theoretical capacity is the 34 kegs of reserve plus about 7 kegs per hour from the refrigeration system.
In practice though, you have a few variables – ice thickness, input temp, ambient temp, and also the water bath temp which is stable at below 1°C during normal operation but will begin to increase as the ice bank is nearing depletion, meaning the last of the ice might not be considered ‘useful’ even though we have accounted for it in the calculation.
