Hey, Rick Uzubell again from Cabaret Design Group,
answering the question,
'What's the best draft beer equipment?'
Welcome to another edition of Design
Buzz. Today we're going to compare the
various types of draft beer system
equipment to determine, once and for all,
what type is the best. So, we'll start
with direct-draw equipment first. What I'm
showing here on this bar is a
single kegerator on the back bar, with
two towers and three faucets. Now,
kegerators are entry-level equipment,
but they do serve a purpose. People who
have a basic operation -- the local corner
neighborhood bar,
what have you. This isn't bad equipment
to own, because for one thing, it is a
minimal cost.
However, if you really look at it a little
bit closer -- here -- this particular unit
which is a Beverage Air, will run about
USD $2,800. Part of the problem with this
equipment is they're space hogs. These are
really designed for three half-barrels
and for that it eats up about five feet
of back bar space, and because also, this
type of cooler is generally about four
inches deeper than your standard under
bar back bar-type coolers, which we
generally show as built-ins. So, the
kegerators are a reasonable investment for
someone who's looking to enter the
market for selling draft beer and with
the half-barrel, you can have a
reasonable amount of supply on-hand
without constantly changing it,
that's true; however, this three-barrel system,
with three faucets, runs about USD $2,800,
shown here.
Alternatively, you could own a Glastender
four-faucet style unit for USD $3,800,
so the cost per
faucet is actually incrementally much
lower, but again, with four faucets how
much draft beer are you really intending
to sell? If you are selling any amount of
draft beer,
most likely you're going to want to have
at least six-to-eight offerings, because
almost everywhere you go
everybody covers the "basic three,"
which is Miller Lite,
Bud Light and Coors, so when you take
those three into consideration, if you
had three more brands to offer, for
instance, or let's say if you're going to
own two three-faucet units, that's six
faucets for USD $5,500. If you go with two
of the Glastender-style units (with four
faucets each) that's about USD $7,500,
and that gives you eight brands -- so you
would have five other brands to rotate
through, which isn't a bad approach. So,
the direct-draw equipment has its place, but
it's really not for bars that serve a
great deal of alcohol and want to have shelf space for it
on the back bar.
Next, we'll cover beer wall systems.
The other type of direct-draw system is the beer wall.
The beer wall is a great approach if you' really
want to serve a lot of draft beer and
your profit model is really derived off
of featuring many craft beers and things
of that nature.
It's a difficult design to incorporate
into a bar
where you're also selling a lot of alcohol. So,
the two really are difficult to blend
together under one roof, in the way I
see it. If you're going to invest in a
beer wall, then the way to do it is to
place alcohol sales in second place and
just try to hope for the best.
The beer wall, as I'm showing here in this
photo, is a nice approach. You can get
into systems as large as 150 brands.
The problem with the beer wall
approach is that the back bar has to be
coincident with the walk-in cooler or
the system doesn't work; we cover this in
a previous video. If you do have the
space to put a walk-in cooler of any
size behind the back bar wall, you have
the makings of a potentially really cool
beer wall approach. These systems are
priced just under what you would invest
in a glycol system, however, that also
partially depends upon the amount of
finish that you're going to put into the
back bar wall, and so forth, so they can be
pricey, but it would probably be less than
USD $1,000 per faucet, so
there's some economy of scale here,
because of the location of your
walk-in cooler, but on the other hand, the
walk-in cooler must be enhanced in order
to be functional for this design as well.
So, it may be, in some instances, sort of a
wash between this approach and a glycol system.
Next, we'll cover long-draw air-cooled systems.
Now in terms of long-draw draft beer
systems, we have the air-cooled system and
the glycol system. The air-cooled system is
the more traditional approach. It was the type
of draft beer system that we had many
years ago, and in recent years, with the
advent of the glycol technology, it has
become less common.
However, the air-cooled systems can be
accommodated under certain circumstances.
As I covered in a previous video, the
walk-in cooler really needs to be
ideally below the bar. The beer shaft
which I'm showing here, in a dotted blue
line, comes from the walk-in cooler, but
the walk-in cooler cannot be placed
particularly where I'm showing it in
this example, as it's too far away for
in order to maintain temperature,
and that's the name of the game in draft
beer -- no matter what type of system.
So ideally, an air-cooled system would
reside in the floor below the bar and if
you have the opportunity to incorporate
a system like that it's do-able, very
reasonable, in terms of cost, but not much
control in the way of temperature -- of
modifying or adjusting temperature
as you go.
Secondly, the beer tower designs are more
limited with air cooling systems because,
glycol systems have become the clear
favorite; but you can always tell
an air-cooled tower by the dome at
the top of the head as shown in this
photograph. So, the system (the approach)
works, but it's limited at best.
Next, we'll cover long-draw glycol system.
Alternatively, if we talk about the
glycol system, the glycol system works
off the principles of refrigeration.
It gives you the ultimate flexibility of
putting your walk-in cooler practically
anywhere you want, and also servicing
multiple beer towers and/or multiple
bars simultaneously from a single power
pack up to 750 feet. Now, of course, some
of these design constraints have
limitations based on the size of the
trunk line. For the glycol system I'm
showing in red, but as you increase the
number of products that you're
installing in the trunk line, if you have
20 or 24 beer products that you're
pushing through, to say two or three
locations, it entails a little bit more
engineering.
However, it's all achievable to support
price. The glycol system offers a
tremendous amount of beer tower designs,
as I'm showing here.
The products are virtually limitless, in
terms of design, and any place you go
nowadays and you're seeing these very
cool designs of the beer towers like I'm
showing here, these are glycol systems.
The advantage of the glycol system is
that with the temperature control of the
power pack controlling the quality of the
beer, it's just as if you are taking the
barrel of beer and placing it right alongside
the faucet where you're pouring -- it's
just about that good.
So, in terms of flexibility and features,
the glycol system is really number one
overall my book. The cost for such a
system will run you somewhere in the
category of about USD $1,000 per
product line (installed) so a 16-faucet
system -- 16 brands -- will run you somewhere
between USD $16,000 - $20,000,
installed, and that would be for standard
beer tower designs -- not for customs. So, in
terms of the overall ranking of these systems,
I would rank the glycol draft beer system number one.
Number two would be the direct-draw beer wall.
Number three would be the direct-draw coolers,
and lastly, would be the
air-cooled long-draw system. That's it,
from top-to-bottom, and that's the way I
see it.