KegLand Questions and Answers

[Josh Dodd]

I have a soda keg on tap. I carb it up to about 25-30 psi and leave it at that for serving pressure as well. Gets decent fizz for me. You do need to have quite a bit of extra line though.
I have about 5m of beer line from the keg to the tap. There’s about 4m and then a joiner with an extra 1m. For some reason, every 3rd or 4th keg seems to want slightly shorter line. If the lines the wrong length you get either really foamy soda or flat soda. I’ve worked out the two optimal lengths my system seems to prefer and use the duotight joiner to swap that extra metre on or off.
Mine is a pretty heavily sweetened root beer with sugar and honey etc so plain water may react differently. I just bo8ghta 10m roll of the eva barrier line and tested out the right length.
I like what was said above about it being more gas efficient. I have a 6kg tank and am still on my first fill after 3 beer kegs and about 5 soda legs so hopefully one tank will last a long time with he carb lid.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

@KegLand-com-au I have a grand deluxe fridge. Just want to check there is nothing in the back wall of the fridge so I can screw mount my gas manifold inside the fridge?

Yes that is correct. No vital organs in the back wall of the fridge. This model has all the electrical and refrigeration components in the left hand side where the temp controller is.

 

[bobsledboy]

Great, thought so just a bit paranoid haha

 

[fdsaasdf]

I have a soda keg on tap. I carb it up to about 25-30 psi and leave it at that for serving pressure as well. Gets decent fizz for me. You do need to have quite a bit of extra line though.
I have about 5m of beer line from the keg to the tap. There’s about 4m and then a joiner with an extra 1m. For some reason, every 3rd or 4th keg seems to want slightly shorter line. If the lines the wrong length you get either really foamy soda or flat soda.

Odd, I've never heard of anyone balancing lines for soda. I run it on my standard 2.4m beer line at 30psi and have never seen foam from soda.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Odd, I've never heard of anyone balancing lines for soda. I run it on my standard 2.4m beer line at 30psi and have never seen foam from soda.

It's no so much the foam it just pours a bit fast. We normally aim for a maximum flow speed of 500ml/10seconds.

 

[Engibeer]

Yes absolutely its more efficient use of CO2 in that respect. If you are carbonating one keg at a time you end up throwing away a keg full of CO2 each time you empty the keg and fill with water. So if you are using the 19L Ball Lock kegs you will end up blowing off about 90-200 grams of CO2 to the atmosphere in this process. So with this carbonation lid you will have significantly reduced gas consumption when compared to batch carbonation of soda water.

I weighed a 19L ball lock keg as I bled the CO2 from it at about 4C/30psi and it wasted 70g. I was trying to back calculate my CO2 usage to see if it was reasonable. In our house we go through a 20L keg of sparkling water every two days, so this waste is quite significant.

 

[Newkid]

Hi kegland just looking to buy a new fermenting fridge
I know you are looking at one for fermazilla
How long before you release it???
Thanks

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Hi kegland just looking to buy a new fermenting fridge
I know you are looking at one for fermazilla
How long before you release it???
Thanks

It's really difficult to give a date on this one as we still have software and some of the injection moulds that are being finished. It definitely will not be released until after February next year. If we run into any complications with any electrical approvals it could take a bit longer. We would be very disappointed if we did not finish before middle of next year.

 

[Josh Dodd]

Odd, I've never heard of anyone balancing lines for soda. I run it on my standard 2.4m beer line at 30psi and have never seen foam from soda.

Yeah, some say you should, some that you don't need to. Most info I read from folks in the US (who seem to be really big on kegged soda's) stated you need pretty long lines.
I initially tried with the same line length as my beer taps and I just got a mass of foam. Gradually lengthened it out and I think I have about 5 or 6 metres now. Too long and the soda comes out flat, too short and it get's really foamy. Soda is carbed significantly higher than beer, and is heavily sweetened, almost syrupy (not sure if that has an impact).
I've never run plain soda water, only root beer, and it usually has anywhere from 2-3 kg of suger, honey, treacle and lactose in it to get the right flavour and mouthfeel. I haven't nailed down the recipe yet so every keg is a little different and I notice differing carb levels in soda from the tap depending on the recipe, As said above, for one keg I actually had to take about a metre off as it just wouldn't stay carbed out of the tap. Took me a few days to work it out- -bumped up the regulator, checked the gas tank, lines and joints for leaks, tried to shake the keg to force carb more, left it an extra 3 or 4 days. Nothing. Then I snipped about a metre off the line and boom... properly carbed soda. Next batch was coming out as pure foam, till I added a duotight joiner and put the extra metre back on.
But as I said, this is all sugery soda so plain soda water may be different.

 

[Newkid]

It's really difficult to give a date on this one as we still have software and some of the injection moulds that are being finished. It definitely will not be released until after February next year. If we run into any complications with any electrical approvals it could take a bit longer. We would be very disappointed if we did not finish before middle of next year.

Thanks might look for a second hand cheap one until you release them

 

[trevgale]

That is awesome, I have looked into rigging up something myself to be able to gas and dispense from PET bottles e.g. for taking samples and experimenting with carbonation levels in fruit beers etc.

@KegLand-com-au Any ETA on these, really keen to get a few.

 

[fdsaasdf]

Yes I dont thing this would be a good idea. The spunding valves are fairly easy to clean and with a phillips head screw driver takes about 2 minutes to tear down as you can see in this video here:


With that said we have been giving our Blowtie here some punishment and it's frequently had krausen go through it and to our amazement it seems to be operating fine even without a clean. So you never know, you might just get as lucky as us and just keep using it without cleaning it.

If you really want to protect the unit then I think the best thing to do would be to make a small receiver/settling tank so the gas runs into this before going into the blowtie. To make a small tank you could use a PET bottle. In fact it was mentioned in this thread a number of pages ago that we would make a tee piece that will enable you to use two of these caps, then use these yellow KL14830 fitting to connect two of these pieces to a coke bottle:

https://www.kegland.com.au/media/images/PCO1881/Tee Iso 1.JPG

https://www.kegland.com.au/media/images/PCO1881/Tee Front.JPG

https://www.kegland.com.au/media/images/PCO1881/Bottle Front.JPG

So this would be a fairly inexpensive way to make a receiver/settling tank. It will also be able to be used as a very inexpensive small keg too.

[/QUOTE]
To help out the above poster, this is what we're asking about.

 

[MontPel]

Not sure if this has been asked but how does the noise of the Series X fridge compare to the Series 4? The Series 4 is very loud and annoying.

 

[Mattym]

Not sure if this has been asked but how does the noise of the Series X fridge compare to the Series 4? The Series 4 is very loud and annoying.

I can’t compare to a series 4 unfortunately, but the series x I received last week seems pretty quiet - I’ve not heard any gurgling noises others have reported on the series 4, just a low compressor hum. The font fan seems louder than the fridge itself, but still bearable for me in the living room.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

@KegLand-com-au Any ETA on these, really keen to get a few.

Yes we already have these carbonation caps that you can see here:
https://www.kegland.com.au/plastic-carbonation-line-cleaning-cap-fermzilla-cap.html

We also have this new product coming into stock in about 4 weeks:
https://www.kegland.com.au/pco-1881-carbonation-cap-tee-piece.html

So this will enable to to build the worlds cheapest keg system if you want to. You would have to make it up using coke bottles and this would be ideal for a mini keg system that could fit into an esky.

I would not keep beer in these types of plastic bottles for long term storage as coke bottles and most soft drink bottles do not have sufficient oxygen barrier properties to store beer for extended period. With that said for storing beer for 1 month they should be fine.

 

[Engibeer]

Any chance of stocking a 3-way ball valve? Cheers

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Any chance of stocking a 3-way ball valve? Cheers

That's a good point. We should probably stock the three way ball valves in the 1/2inch size. I will get that sorted out.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Not sure if this has been asked but how does the noise of the Series X fridge compare to the Series 4? The Series 4 is very loud and annoying.

The Series X fridge is almost silent. The noisiest part of the fridge is the fan at the back of the fridge. So if you turn the fan off it's pretty much silent.

 

[donald_trub]

Hi Kee, any plans to sell locks for faucets? These look pretty good -

 

[Cstew]

Hi Kee, any plans to sell locks for faucets? These look pretty good -

*Unscrews tap handle, then bypasses lock and drinks all your beer out of spite for not trusting me alone with your taps.