Let me preface this by saying that my driver's area is going to be completely closed off from the rest of the living space, with a door in between. There will NEVER be any drinking and driving going on.
My fiancee and I are discussing having beverage dispensing in our bus. This includes soft drinks as well as beer.
It seems soft drink setups are not too terribly expensive, and should pay for themselves in 3 to 5 years in cost savings vs buying sodas in cans at walmart. I think such a system is also nicer to the environment as there are no cans or bottles to deal with.
We'll also be doing some home brewing and want to put our beer on tap. Ideally, we'd like to have a 4 beer system with 2 home brew and 2 commercial beers available.
The obvious place for the primary dispensers would be in the galley or living room. However, I've been thinking that it would be nice to have a secondary dispenser accessible behind a locked outside hatch so that we wouldn't have to tramp in and out to refill cups.
I'm still researching this. However, I haven't (yet) found how to implement a 2-dispenser setup.
I have storage space set aside for the syrup boxes and kegs, as well as the CO2 canister.
I'm thinking I might also need to keep the soft drink CO2 canister separate from the beer one. Also it seems some beers require a CO2/Nitrogen mixed gas setup, so I might need to keep that in mind as well.
With soft drinks, there is a "cold plate" which chills the soda before it comes out of the bar wand. With beer, it seems you're supposed to keep the keg itself cold (38ºF is recommended).
Beer lines need to be cleaned a lot more often than soda lines. The cleaners are caustic or acidic depending on what you're cleaning for.
So, on the off chance that someone here has some *actual* experience with beverage dispensing systems (besides just consuming beverages that is), I thought I would post here.
Is it possible to use a cold plate type of setup for beer? Or do I *really* have to have the beer stored at 38ºF?
Is it possible to have 2 dispensers from the same beverage box? Surely it must be, and I'm just missing something obvious...
Is this idea crazy or cool or somewhere in between?
thanks,
jim