A draft cooler chills the beer on its way to the tap, so the keg can stay in the cellar where there is room for it. Ice-bank and flow-through units for a short run; inline glycol for the long haul from cellar to bar.
A kegerator keeps the keg itself cold inside the cabinet; a cooler leaves the keg where it stands and chills the beer as it passes through a coil, so the pour lands cold.
Ice bank suits a short run with the keg near the bar — beer passes through a coil in a frozen bath, much like a jockey box. Glycol is for long draw, pumping coolant 10-30 m from a keg room without touching the beer.
Size it by your busiest hour, not by tap count — these run from a single line up to 120 L/h across six coils. Tell us peak pours and how many brands you keep on and we'll match it.
An ice bank needs around 3 hours from cold to build its bath, so switch it on before service rather than during it.
A glycol chiller beer systems run on chills a bath of glycol and pumps it out alongside the beer line. That bundle is a beer python line or trunk line beer run, and the whole arrangement is a long draw beer system — the standard answer whenever the cellar is more than a few metres from the tap. A glycol power pack is the pump and reservoir; a beer line chiller is the smaller version for one or two lines, and a beer tower cooling fan blows chilled air up inside the tower so the last half-metre does not warm the pour. A keg cooling system is the alternative where the kegs can sit next to the bar.
