Keg Refrigerator

One of the best reasons to employ a keg refrigerator is the ability to extend the life of your keg, or more accurately, the life of the beer inside your keg. Trying to keep a keg fresh using only a bucket and some ice will usually hold you over for a couple of days, but many of the basic picnic style taps are prone to air leakage, which can leave you with flat beer. By using a keg refrigerator and all of its accessories (the CO2, the high quality valves and hoses, etc.), suddenly that keg will last pretty much as long as it takes you to drink it.

So how long, really, does a beer kept in a keg refrigerator last and why? Well, to answer that you first have to understand what makes beer go bad in the first place. The most common beer spoiler is oxygen. When oxygen gets into the keg, it allows the natural bacteria in the alcohol to change. While this bacteria won't kill you or even make you sick, it certainly will render your beer unpalatable. Also, temperature plays a major role in keeping beer fresh, and for a similar reason as air; it affects the speed at which the natural bacteria in the beer can grow. Bacteria grows slower in cold temperatures, which is why many beer trucks transport beer in cooled trucks and why a keg fridge adds life to your beer.

The Life Expectancy of a Keg in a Keg Refrigerator

A keg in a quality keg refrigerator will receive little or no oxygen and never drop below the desired temperature, thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit for most draft brands. All told, this will allow your beer to remain safe, fresh and tasty for two or three months.

Since a regular keg or ½ barrel holds roughly one hundred and twenty beers, that gives you two beers a day for two full months!