Weird Problem with Gas

[nocky]

No not my gas but the Kegs gas, I run about 10 feet (3mts) of 5mm beer line and pressure of around 10psi, I have a Keg King Kegerator MK4 with 2 taps and font fan, my beer pours fine whilst we're drinking but when I go to pour next day nothing comes out and seems to be a blockage, looking at the lines I can see air bubbles so I guess the co2 is breaking out overnight, it takes ages to bleed beer through again, I have tried chopping a metre off 1 beer line and really doesn't make any difference, I have tried leaving the font fan on all night and day and still no difference, I am guessing it's a problem with my carbonating pressure and pouring pressure, I carbonate by just connecting gas line to keg for around 10 days before use, beer seems fine when we drink it and has a nice head and gas seems about right, I don't appear to have any leaks, I have a 2.5kg gas bottle and have got around 16 kegs out of it, gas is on all the time to aide carbonation, all equipment is fairly new (April 2016) including the regulator, have had the problem almost from day 1, it was not as bad when I force carbonated but I used way more gas then, my first bottle lasted about 8 kegs.

 

[good4whatAlesU]

Partly frozen line (s)?

What temps are you running at?

 

[damoninja]

10 ought to give you a slow-medium pressure at that length but fine... The carbonation of your beer should make little difference to the pressure it comes out at.

If it's not frozen which it probably isn't, could be hops or other matter blocking the dip tube? Assuming using ball locks, if so the gas line will fit on the liquid line and you can blast out whatever's blocking it. Don't let liquid go back up to your reg though

 

[peteru]

I had a similar issue with my KK4 once. It turns out that one of the coiled beer lines slipped behind the keg and was against the cold back wall. That froze the beer in the line and had me stumped for about 5 minutes.

Make sure that your beer lines don't touch the back wall and don't run the KK any colder than about 4C until you figure out what's happening. You may also want to use a reliable thermometer to calibrate the KK temperature control. Mine was about 2C out. It was keeping water in the fridge at around 4C when I had it set to 6C.

 

[nocky]

Thanks guys, was thinking frozen also, I run at about 0c and have a font fan also, i can't the lines are frozen though, i will turn up the temp a couple of degrees, see how that goes, I have calibrated the outside thermometer with the inside temp

 

[2much2spend]

Try to put a trap in the beer line make it drop down then up, that might stop the co2 from rising to the highest point.

 

[Kingy]

Thanks guys, was thinking frozen also, I run at about 0c and have a font fan also, i can't the lines are frozen though, i will turn up the temp a couple of degrees, see how that goes, I have calibrated the outside thermometer with the inside temp

when my beer lines have frozen it's better just to turn the fridge off for an hour or so. Not sure if it's been said but if you think the dip tube is blocked, put a beer out disconnect on the gas line and turn the pressure up a bit and connect up to the beer out on the keg to blow the shit back out.

 

[nocky]

A mate who is an Air Con installer bought his fridge thermometer around and we discovered that the outside thermometer read 0c whilst the inside temp was actually -3.8c and my lines were close to the back wall, so re calibrated the thermometer and moved the line slightly and problem solved, I didn't think lines were freezing as I could generally get beer flowing after 10 minutes and i could see beer moving in the line, must have been freezing near the rear, anyhow happy now and thanks for the answers

 

[peteru]

Sounds exactly like what I wrote above. Mine was out by about 2C, yours was twice as bad.

Glad to hear you got it sorted and more importantly that you now know what to look out for next time around. Keep clear of the back wall, sit your lines on top or in front of the kegs.