Beer Chilling Systems: Which Type Is Right for My Restaurant?

March 24, 2018

A refrigeration unit is integral to the functioning of any restaurant.

Beers are best served cold – there’s no questioning that! But which beer chilling system is the best? From reach-in coolers to glycol chillers, a beer chilling system is an important piece of restaurant equipment that completes your commercial kitchen, ensuring a positive experience for your customers. Thus, it must be selected carefully.

The right restaurant equipment is a must if you are to set up your commercial kitchen successfully. Before buying a refrigeration unit, consider your available space. Consideration also has to be given to your restaurant concept and style. We’ll dive into two major beer chilling restaurant equipment options to help you decide.

Reach-in Freezers and Coolers

A reach-in cooler can be carefully placed in the bar area of your restaurant. This restaurant equipment is usually low to the ground, and can be set to just the right temperature for your beer. Staff will have to reach into the freezer or coolers to retrieve the beer. Such restaurant equipment is best designed for storing bottled beers. Still, there are a few factors that must be considered before making the purchase for your commercial kitchen.

Size and Position: One of your most important considerations when buying a reach-in freezer or cooler is its size. The refrigerator will likely be positioned in the bar area of your restaurant. However, you want to ensure that this restaurant equipment is easily accessible and that the size is just right for its location.

Style: There are different styles and types of reach-in coolers. While some consist of a refrigeration unit and a freezer unit, you will likely need this restaurant equipment to be all refrigeration and no freezer. The door style – transparent or opaque – should also be considered.

Glycol Chillers

This restaurant equipment keeps the beer cold from the store room to the tap, allowing your customers to enjoy fresh, cold beer without opening a bottle.

Glycol chillers are essentially refrigerators that function in a draft system. This will require a cooler, kegs, pressure gas, tubing, and a faucet for direct serving. This restaurant equipment allows you enjoy reliable control over the temperature of the beer running out the faucet. A walk-in cooler houses all beer kegs.

With the right amount of gas pressure (usually a bottled combination of carbon dioxide and nitrogen), the gas is forced out of the keg through the tube and out through the faucet. Although this process might seem straightforward, there are certain considerations to be made when employing this restaurant equipment.

Pressure: The location of your walk-in freezer and tubing will impose some resistance against the free flow of beer. You must ensure that the right amount of gas pressure is applied to see the beer through to the faucet.

Carbonation and Temperature: How carbonated is the beer in the keg? The kind of beer you are selling and the temperature of your keg will have a major impact on the kind of gas combination needed to push it through. You want to be careful not to overly carbonate the beer; it could get too foamy or go super flat.

Your choice of restaurant equipment must be made with due consideration to the style and ambience of your restaurant and bar. Ultimately, you want to ensure that your chilling system leaves your customers feeling refreshed and satisfied. With the right amount of care and consideration, your restaurant equipment can sate their thirst for the perfect, cold beer.

Kitchen Equipment: Choosing the Right Cutting Board

Kitchen Equipment: Choosing the Right Cutting Board

Every kitchen, from a food truck to a large restaurant, needs cutting boards. From vegetables to bread to meat and fish, your chefs and cooks have to chop things every day. Have you put a lot of thought into this important piece of kitchen equipment? Like many other...

read more
Catering to Generation Z

Catering to Generation Z

As time marches on, we continue to have new generations arising behind the ones we’ve already named. Most recently everyone has been focused on Millennials, whose tech-savvy and focus on experiences over things have shifted the face of every industry. Now, there’s a...

read more
4 Ways to Keep Your Restaurant Employees Engaged

4 Ways to Keep Your Restaurant Employees Engaged

You can have everything you need to run an amazing restaurant – a great menu, incredible chef, the best location, perfect pricing, and top-of-the-line kitchen equipment. But even with all of that, you won’t succeed if your employees are disengaged and unprofessional....

read more
Kitchen Fun : Food and the Oscars

Kitchen Fun : Food and the Oscars

Hollywood’s biggest night was February 24th, 2019, and was it ever a show. There were stars, glitz, glamour, and amazing outfits everywhere. There were also cameras catching every moment, from the red carpet to the after-parties. What happened at the show and after...

read more
4 Keys to Successful Commercial Kitchen Design

4 Keys to Successful Commercial Kitchen Design

If you’re opening a new restaurant or renovating your existing kitchen, you probably already have some ideas about how it should look. However, it’s important to look beyond your own ideas and understand the keys to good design in general. This will help you...

read more
Bring Together Your Back and Front of House

Bring Together Your Back and Front of House

Does your restaurant feel like a simmering battle between the back of house (BOH) and front of house (FOH)? Or do both units get along famously? If your restaurant is like many, you find yourself somewhere in the middle. Rarely do you have an all-out war, but...

read more
Commercial Kitchen Fun: Cooking With Mustard

Commercial Kitchen Fun: Cooking With Mustard

One of the things that make owning a restaurant so fun is the ability to be creative with your menu. With the help of your chef and cooks, you can come up with some really fun dishes to serve. To get your imagination going, we’re going to share some fun dishes that...

read more
Drive Traffic to Your Restaurant From Instagram

Drive Traffic to Your Restaurant From Instagram

You have a lot of restaurant equipment that you need to make your location run smoothly. You might think about your point-of-sale system, refrigeration units, cooking equipment, and more. But what about Instagram? That’s right, a social media platform can be one of...

read more
Handling Theft in Your Convenience Store

Handling Theft in Your Convenience Store

Running a convenience store is challenging to say the least. You need to staff it, but not with too many people. Then again, too few and you have a lot of problems – including theft. There are three groups that can be responsible for product and money loss in your...

read more
Kitchen Equipment Spotlight: How Clean is Your Coffee Pot?

Kitchen Equipment Spotlight: How Clean is Your Coffee Pot?

If you were going to rank kitchen equipment based on how much work it does, the humble coffee pot has to be near the top. In almost every restaurant, people order coffee with their meal or dessert. The problem is that because the coffee pot is working so hard, it...

read more
Should You Add a Food Truck to Your Restaurant?

Should You Add a Food Truck to Your Restaurant?

If your restaurant is doing well, you might be thinking about opening a second location. After all, that’s usually the next step when it’s time to expand, right? Before you jump in, though, consider another option. Maybe having a food truck would be a better choice....

read more
Take Advantage of Your Customer’s Technology

Take Advantage of Your Customer’s Technology

Some restaurant owners hate seeing customers snapping photos of food – it means that the food isn’t eaten at its best, and sometimes it’s a sign of a table that’s going to be slow to turn over. Then there are other owners and managers who see an opportunity. The truth...

read more
How to Reduce Turnover at Your Restaurant

How to Reduce Turnover at Your Restaurant

Having the right employees can make or break your restaurant. You can have the best food and kitchen supplies, but tension in the back of the house can cause delays, poor morale, and even the loss of key staff. You can have a beautiful dining room, but surly wait...

read more
Should Your Commercial Kitchen Consider Catering?

Should Your Commercial Kitchen Consider Catering?

As a business owner, it’s important to always be looking for new ways to grow your business. There are a lot of ways to do this, and one of the most common for many restaurants is catering. Of course, catering changes how your commercial kitchen runs a lot of the...

read more