Coils vs Cold Plates
We manufacture all of our jockey boxes with 50'-100' stainless steel coils. We do this because stainless steel coils offer proven advantages over cold plates.
Disadvantages of cold plates
- Cold plates are heavy. Each plate weighs 11 pounds.
- They only chill a few ounces of liquid at a time
- You must keep your kegs on ice because of the small chilling surface area
- Cold plates are only suited for small sample pours or low volume applications
- You need vinyl tubing to connect the cold plate to the shanks.
Advantages of coils
- They are light. At 4 pounds, each coil weighs almost 75% less than plates
- A 50' coil chills over 17oz of liquid continuously. Meaning you'll always have a cold pint ready to pour.
- There is no need to keep your kegs on ice. Our jockey boxes will take a 70ºf keg down to 38ºf if properly filled with ice.
- Designed for high volume application
- Direct coil to shank finings. Your beverage always touches 100% stainless steel.
DOES COIL SIZE MATTER?
Yeah, kinda, but—it depends. Some people wonder why we use 50’ coils per draft line—instead of the old-school notion that all coils should be 120’.
A 50' coil holds approximately 17 oz of liquid—enough for more than a full pint. Our jockey boxes are designed so that there is no diameter or temperature change from the moment your beer enters the coils (assuming they’re filled properly with ice).
However… If you’re pouring at an event that’s absolutely bonkers and you need to be cranking our full pitchers of beer non-stop (instead of casual pints or typical festival sample pours), consider upgrading either of our 2-tap stainless editions with 100’ coils or going the ultra heavy-duty route with our Roto-molded editions where 100’ coils comes standard in our large, 2-tap version and optional in our 1-tap tailgate edition.
It’s not uncommon for folks to blame shorter coil length rather than acknowledge a poorly designed and built jockey box.
For a full explanation, read our blog post, Does coil length matter?
