Draught System BTU Calculator

Size your glycol chiller by BTU load

Every long draw draft beer system puts its own BTU (British Thermal Unit) load on the glycol chiller keeping it cold. A chiller's BTU rating is how much heat it can pull out of the glycol as it circulates through the trunk line to your towers, so the right chiller depends on your faucet count, trunk line length, tube size and dispense temperature, not just how many taps you're running.

Undersize the chiller and the compressor runs almost nonstop trying to hold the glycol bath temperature, which wears it out faster and leaves you pouring warm, foamy beer on a busy night. Oversize it and you're paying for cooling capacity you'll never use. Our BTU calculator below runs the numbers for you:

Enter your faucet count, trunk line length, base load and dispense temperature, pick your trunk line, and it returns the exact BTU/hr your system needs so you can match it to the right glycol chiller the first time.

Recommended trunk line for your run length

Before you calculate, use this as a general starting point. Trunk line size should scale with how far the beer travels from chiller to tower:

Longer runs and warmer install spaces lose more heat along the way, which is why the calculator below asks for your trunk line's actual BTU/ft rather than length alone.

Pick your trunk line, enter your system details below, and get your exact BTU/hr requirement in seconds.

 BTU Calculator Worksheet