First Keg'd Beer Is All Foam

[stux]

Stux, so it's a case of burping till it has no presure or are you saying to open the keg? I thought that was a BIG no no to allow oxygen into the keg.

Also why is 1m to short? Why is 2m considered better? How does this change the beer?

Now that I'm on a real computer and not a phone...

If you wanted to de-carbonate a bottle of coke, you shake it, let the fizz out by unscrewing the lid a bit, and repeat until done.

The same applies to a keg, except you don't have to pop the lid you can just pull the PRV.

So, shake your keg a bit, then release the pressure...

wait a bit, then perhaps do it again...

once you've done that a bit, just hook it up to your reg at a calculated kpa based on fridge temp and desired C02 volumes, ie 90kpa, and it'll come up to the right level.


The reason you need a longer beer line is to provide resistance to the flow of beer, which means the beer will pour slower which means you can use a higher pressure to dispense, which keeps the bubbles in the beer.

The ideal situation is to balance the line so that the dispensing pressure is equal to your carbonating pressure.

Carbonating pressure is dependant on temperature and desired volumes

Dispensing pressure is dependant on beer line length, and beer line internal diameter and height that the beer has to be pushed to get to the tap.

If you ID of your beerline is 6mm you need more beer line or lower pressure, so you can get nice 5mm line which means the lines can be shorter.

There is a spreadsheet which can calculate both your carbonating pressure, and how long your beer line should be to enable you to use a dispensing pressure which is equal to your carbonating pressure.

1M is too short, especially if your beer line is 6mm or greater ID

2M is generally a relatively good length

 

[stux]

Re slow carbing

The more headspace you have and the less beer, the faster your beer will carb at serving pressure

I like to accelerate the process a bit by force carbing to below final carbonation and then dialing back to serving pressure.

What I've found works well for me, with a full keg at fridge temperature is to dial the pressure to 300kpa for 24 hrs. I then dial it back to zero, and over the next 12 hours or so the pressure on the reg will drop to about serving pressure, normally a bit lower, in which case I then dial the pressure back up to 90kpa which is my carbonating/serving pressure, at that stage its got a pretty good pour and over the next day or two it will develop full carbonation and no more gas will be getting absorbed by the beer

It helps if you have a manifold to turn off your other beers when you are above your carbing/serving pressure

 

[stux]

So, work out how many volumes you want, and what carbing pressure at your fridge temperature that is, then work out how long a beer line length you need to serve under that pressure.

I shoot for 2.5V, which is about 90kpa at 5C