CO2 Reg freezing up at low pressure

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pokolbinguy

The Pokolbin Brewhaus and Winery.
Joined
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Hi All,

I have a bit of a CO2 reg issue.

We use CO2 in our winery to gas down the head spaces of the wine tanks to purge out the air/O2 in the headspace to limit oxidation, as such we have a CO2 bottle (F size I think, fits a hand trolley perfectly) with a CO2 reg on it and a simple hose on the out side of the reg to gas the tank head space.

In the past we have used a Harris (602?) and also CigWeld beverage regulator, we use it a very low pressure, such that the flow out of the hose feels like someone is blowing air on your face, from time to time the hose will frost up, or the bottom of the bottle but very rarely would the reg show any frost.

Yesteday the Cigweld (which belonged to me personally) reg decided to shit itself (internal seals/diaphragm died) and as such I called the guys at craftbrewer at 4pm (nsw time) and had two Micromatic regs delivered in under 24 hrs (top service by both Craftbrewer and Fastway couriers).

I then hooked up a reg to the CO2 bottle, put the hose on, turned the reg on to low pressure (approx about 2psi) and after about 5 minutes or less the reg froze up and to the point that the gas flow stopped. Lots of frost!

I called the guys at CB and they said they had a similar situation when gassing down cubes for concentrate/wort but other than that nothing.

I then rang the Micromatic guys, got a call back from the manager with no real answer but to his merit this was at 5.30pm and and he was going to find out more for me.

My question after all of this is, using the previous regs we did not have this freezing issue, same application, different reg. Volume not pressure is what we are after is a steady (slow not fast) flow of CO2 to gas down our wine tanks so there is no resistance (e.g. keg).

Any tips, comments, ideas?

This seams like something so damn simple but it certainly was something that gave me the shits at 4pm in the arvo when I really want to gas my wine tanks !!!!

Cheers, Pok
 

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