The Design Mistakes of BEER CAVE
Beer cave are widely used in medium and large-sized convenience stores and professional wine sales venues.
Because people mistakenly believed that this type of cold storage was just an ordinary cold storage with a glass door or regarded it as a large refrigerator, there were many misunderstandings in its design.
Now, let’s list the design misunderstandings in beer cave according to five dimensions: the warehouse body, the door system, refrigeration, auxiliary systems, and operation preparation.
1. Common Mistakes in Warehouse Insulation
According to refrigeration knowledge, we wrongly designed the thickness of the beer cave to be 75 millimeters:
The temperature inside the beer cave needs to be maintained at 0–4℃ for a long time. The temperature difference between the inside and outside is approximately 25℃.
In tropical regions during summer, the temperature inside the warehouse is generally less than 0℃. Therefore, when designing the thickness of the warehouse panels, we should choose at least 100 millimeters (120 millimeters is even better), and use B1 grade PU core material; if using 75 millimeter panels, it will cause the compressor to be overloaded for a long time and make it impossible to maintain the warehouse temperature.
No insulation on the ground:
Some beer cave only place the storage boards on the concrete floor without doing any ground insulation. This will cause the concrete to expand and crack in winter. At the same time, the deicing water inside the warehouse and the ground condensation will lead to constant water accumulation.
The correct approach is to lay XPS/PU insulation on the bottom surface. During construction, the reinforcing bars must be hardened, and the ground slope must be designed for drainage.
Re-patching holes after pipeline passing through the panel:
The MEP pipelines (lighting lines, defrost drainage, temperature control lines) were not positioned before pouring the concrete floor/setting the panel; later, hole drilling and locking pin cutting caused cold bridges, cold leakage and steam barrier fractures.
The designers should conduct joint reviews before the concrete floor is poured.
2.Misconceptions about Glass Door Systems (Most Common)
Replace the beer cave special door with a back-thermally insulated door or a common household hollow door:
Considering that the door is opened frequently on a daily basis and there are cases where customers bump into the door while pushing shopping carts, when designing the glass door for it, we need to equip it with Low-E electrically heated hollow glass and it can automatically self close. To prevent collisions, a stainless steel kick panel is installed at the bottom.
https://www.artrefrigeration.com/products/cold-room-solutions/walk-in-cold-room
Furthermore, the door seal strips were not designed as consumables in advance, resulting in the following issues:
- No specific specifications, models, and installation structures for replaceable magnetic seal strips were reserved during the design stage;
- After the door seal strips become old, it is impossible to directly replace the standard seal strips on-site;
- Maintenance can only involve removing the door, sending it back to the factory, or conducting overall door repair.
3.Misunderstandings about Cooling and Airflow
The unit is selected based on “static volume” without leaving any margin:
The designers did not take into account the heat generated by the glass radiation, the heat from opening the door for ventilation, and the heat load of the full beer storage.
Commercial beer caves should reserve 20% of cooling capacity and calibrate the re-warming time based on “full-load temperature beer storage + peak opening of the door”.
The air conditioner blows directly onto the goods:
The evaporator is placed at a low position or the air outlet is facing the shelves. The local temperature is less than 0℃, causing the aluminum cans/glass bottles to crack due to freezing and the wine labels to rot from moisture.
The correct approach is to install the air conditioner at a high position on the ceiling, with a distance of more than 30 centimeters from the ceiling and no less than 50 centimeters from the goods. The air should be sent upwards and then returned at the bottom, with the airflow not blowing onto the bottles.
The defrosting was not carried out according to the real-time requirements:
Sometimes we forcibly set the electric defrosting, which resulted in the warehouse temperature fluctuating by 3–5℃ each time, and the beer repeatedly experienced temperature cycles, accelerating its aging.
The designers should add an intelligent temperature and humidity defrosting system.
The condensing unit is placed inside the store:
Place the condenser next to the small room in the beer warehouse, without discharging the heat outdoors, which led to an increase in the indoor temperature and a decrease in the unit’s parameters.
For large beer warehouses, the condensing unit should have an independent mechanical room and be remotely discharged outdoors.
4.Misconceptions about Humidity/Lighting/Drainage
Matching the high humidity of the wine cellar with beer:
Beer bottles are metal caps or cans, and they do not require a relative humidity of 70%;
Excessive humidity can instead cause the bottle caps to corrode, labels to deteriorate, and condensation on the glass door.
The relative humidity in the beer cave should be controlled at 50–65%.
Regarding lighting, we follow the following principles
Beer Cave lighting should be designed for beer protection, not simply product visibility.
The lighting design issues are as follows:
- Although LEDs have low heat generation, low heat does not mean no impact on beer;
- Strong white light exposure for a long time will increase the risk of beer being exposed to light;
- For IPAs and other beers, attention should be paid to the lightstruck / skunky flavor caused by light exposure;
- If high-brightness white light is used and kept on constantly for a long time, it is equivalent to continuously increasing the exposure to light.
A more reasonable design concept is:
Warm color low-intensity lighting + lights turn on when people arrive / lights go off when people leave
Avoid strong white light and 24-hour continuous illumination
No standing water in the defrosting drainage system:
The drainage pipe directly connects to the sewer, causing the cold air in the warehouse to escape and the sewer odor (small insects) to backflow.
Therefore, we must use a U-shaped water storage bend + heating belt to prevent blockages.
No safety release lock:
If customers mistakenly lock the storage area, without an internal emergency release mechanism, it is extremely likely to cause an accident.
5.The misconception of confusing “display” with “storage”
Emphasize appearance quality over functionality:
There are too many beers on the shelves, blocking the rear exhaust duct. This results in the temperature at the middle layer being 4℃ lower than that at the entrance.
Usable capacity ≠ physical filling capacity. The shelves must have air flow channels.
Failure to distinguish different temperature zones:
The temperature inside the warehouse was uniformly set at 4℃.
The designers did not distinguish the storage areas for draft beer and bottled beer, which affected the taste of different beers.
Without considering the pre-approval and scalability:
Construction was carried out first, and then fire protection, sanitation, and air flow channels were added later; when the equipment configuration was changed and the SKU was expanded, there was no reserved capacity for the equipment, and additional construction costs were incurred due to the need to dismantle the racks for secondary renovations.
Summary:
The typical collapse formula for a beer cave = Backroom cold storage concept + Household hollow glass door + Selecting the unit based on the empty space + No ground insulation. If only two of these four factors are present, within six months of operation, the cold storage will condense moisture and energy consumption will double.
We hope the above design mistakes can serve as a reminder for you.
If you want to have an excellent beer cave, please contact us.
Thank you for your attention.
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