Flooded Regs

[tipsy_mcstagger]

tried my first forced carb tonight & flooded my F%$*ing regs! I have repeatedly purged the regs & got all the beer out but should I get it serviced? It still works fine.

tipsy

 

[Ross]

Unless you are competant to take one apart & do it yourself, you'll have to get it serviced & most likely rekitted. If you leave it, even if the regulator survives, the beer will sour & start infecting your brews. ALL regulators should be protected by a flow back valve. Cheap insurance against this problem.

cheers Ross

 

[Stoodoo]

I've been lazy and will have to get myself one of those reverse flow thingies. Months ago I lost my mind and things happened which shouldn't have. Needless to say, I had beer flow back through the regulator. I immediately flushed the reg and lines with water and then metho. Luckily I also had some alcohol on hand..... isopropyl alcohol that is, and flushed the reg multiple times with the stuff. I don't know, maybe I was lucky or something, but I haven't had a problem with the regulator, or infected beers since the "incident"(not that I had any problems with it before that).

Cheers
.

 

[Batz]

Pull it to bits and clean it up.
Nothing to regulators

Batz

 

[Back Yard Brewer]

Unless you are competant to take one apart & do it yourself, you'll have to get it serviced & most likely rekitted. If you leave it, even if the regulator survives, the beer will sour & start infecting your brews. ALL regulators should be protected by a flow back valve. Cheap insurance against this problem.

cheers Ross

Cheap insurance,yes. Some time ago I managed to put my gas line on the liquid side of the keg. The Backflow valve saved the day.

 

[Duff]

I pulled apart my Dad's a couple of days ago (Micromatic) as he flooded his a couple of times. Tipped it upside down and stale beer started to drip out of it :blink: The beer had started to pit the internal spring, but a good scrub and soak in Napisan cleaned it out fine. We also fitted a check valve from GMK to prevent against in the future.

Clean it out as soon as possible.

Cheers.

 

[albrews]

I've been lazy and will have to get myself one of those reverse flow thingies. Months ago I lost my mind and things happened which shouldn't have. Needless to say, I had beer flow back through the regulator. I immediately flushed the reg and lines with water and then metho. Luckily I also had some alcohol on hand..... isopropyl alcohol that is, and flushed the reg multiple times with the stuff. I don't know, maybe I was lucky or something, but I haven't had a problem with the regulator, or infected beers since the "incident"(not that I had any problems with it before that).

Cheers
.

hi, until i can fit a reverse flow valve to my micromatic, i just ensure my co2 pressure fro the gas cylinder is higher than the internal keg pressure, then once connected i adjust the pressure to the desired value.
this works well.

cheers alan

 

[MHB]

This has been an interesting question for some time.

If you have an open circuit to the reg you can see the pressure on the beer.
With a non-return/check valve, you only see the pressure in the reg.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, for several years we sold the CIG Bevireg, that comes with a NRV (non return valve) built in, now I sell the Micromatic, over the last year we have sold nearly 100 Micromatic regs, 1 person has managed to get it wet.

None of them have a NRV, customers all get told how to use the reg properly and the evidence would suggest that they are listening.

Personally I think the advantages of knowing the true system pressure outweigh the minor risk.

Just be careful.

Hope you all have a very well wet 07.

MHB

 

[tipsy_mcstagger]

Thanks for all the advice.

I have just finishe stripping the regs, cleaning & reassembling. Seems to be wroking fine.

There was a fair bit of beer on the other side of the diaphram so well worth stripping & cleaning as no amount of purging would have got that out.

Thanks again.

 

[Phrak]

Re check-valves/Non-return valves - I have one in my system on the inside of my keg fridge setup like this (let's see how my MS Paint skillz are):

(thanks to craftbrewer for the pics h34r: )

This gives me the ability to disconnect my gas line from the outside of the fridge, and hook up another line to carbonate my kegs without having to open the fridge and muck around with disconnecting gas lines, etc.

I was aware that the NRV would stop the ability for me to read the pressure in the fridge kegs, but those kegs are pretty-much set-and-forget at the serving pressure.

 

[Batz]

This has been an interesting question for some time.

If you have an open circuit to the reg you can see the pressure on the beer.
With a non-return/check valve, you only see the pressure in the reg.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, for several years we sold the CIG Bevireg, that comes with a NRV (non return valve) built in, now I sell the Micromatic, over the last year we have sold nearly 100 Micromatic regs, 1 person has managed to get it wet.

None of them have a NRV, customers all get told how to use the reg properly and the evidence would suggest that they are listening.

Personally I think the advantages of knowing the true system pressure outweigh the minor risk.

Just be careful.

Hope you all have a very well wet 07.

MHB

I am with you MHB
Check value is a pain in the arse,the true pressure in your kegs(if you turn off the gas)you don't know.
Really you should not get beer in your reg.that said I have done it.
Just strip it straight away and clean up,5 minutes max.

Batz

 

[Ross]

The flowback valve is extremely useful for when you are rapid carbonating your brews; doesn't matter how carefull you are, accidents happen, as personal experience confirms - I have my carbonating line coming off a T piece & then through the flowback valve, this protects my regulator while carbonating, but doesn't stop me reading the true system pressure.
Best of both worlds...
P.S. Stripping a regulator may be fine for those competent at doing so, but I certainly wouldn't be recommending customers to strip theirs down, not with the safety issues involved.

Cheers Ross

 

[Wortgames]

I have non-return valves on each leg of my manifold - I shudder to think of the mess I would make when swapping kegs if they were force carbed, uncarbed, or a different temperature for example. Having 2 kegs on a T-split was bad enough, but I have 6 hooked up at a time now. It's also good to know that if I've got a leaky keg somewhere, I can turn off the gas and there will only be one flat keg in the morning instead of 6.

I don't really 'miss' the ability to see the keg pressure from the reg. I don't think it's especially useful info anyway. If I'm fault-finding, a quick pour from each tap will tell me everything I need to know about the pressure levels of each keg, and in a much more useful way than seeing the 'total' pressure of all kegs. Otherwise, the system is basically at the same pressure as the reg.

Just my 2c of course, but I think the usefulness of NR valves greatly outweighs their 'inconvenience', especially if you are running multiple kegs off a single reg.

 

[PostModern]

I've never had beer up my gas line. I can't imagine how I could even make that happen without ramping up the pressure to car-tyre levels and inverting a keg. (EDIT: maybe if a keg is carbed to a higher pressure than the gas line when I connect it? Ahh, the joys of a balanced system).

 

[tipsy_mcstagger]

After flooding & cleaning my regs I reconnected the gas and the beer tasted fine on Monday night. havent tried the beer since and tonight I tried it again and there is a definite stale after taste.

The brew was a Brewcraft english bitter & English bitter brewcraft Kit #70. I simmered the kit for 20mins then strained that into the fermenter with the tinand some boiling water. I added some cold water then pitched the re-hydrated Safale yeast. continued to add cold water to 23L. temp stabalised at 20deg. Temps got up to about 25 deg during ferment.

After two weeks FG down to 1005 so racked into keg, CHilled & thats when I flooded my regs.

This is the first brew I have kegged, I normally bottle, but I leave my bootles age for 8-10weeks before drinking and they come out fantastic. The only thing I have changed really is drinming it a lot sooner and sticking it in the keg.

So my questions are;
1. Is the stale taste from oxidation or stale ingredients
2. Has this taste been there all the time but goes away after time and thats why I havenmt tasted it before? And therefore it will go away in the brew?

Thanks

Tipsy

 

[Doc]

I've never had beer up my gas line. I can't imagine how I could even make that happen without ramping up the pressure to car-tyre levels and inverting a keg. (EDIT: maybe if a keg is carbed to a higher pressure than the gas line when I connect it? Ahh, the joys of a balanced system).

I'm with you Pomo, only time I've ever done it is when I've overfilled the keg and the beer level is up to the gas dip tube.
Having said that I don't shake carbonate either.

Doc