DrPhilGood

Recipes 

Hey Guys so with the inspiration of a few people on the internet I decided to go ahead and take a shot at pressure fermenting. I put all the parts together and have it currently on a black IPA. The IPA has been in the primary for 8 days now and has slowed down much. For the 8 days I had a normal 3 piece air lock on it and fermenting normally. I just built the regulator today and figured i would give it a shot and put it on now to test it out. I have the airtrol rv 5300 adjustable pressure relief valve. As of right now there is no pressure showing on the dial. I am trying to figure out if there is a leak, my relief valve is opened the wrong way, or theres not enough CO2 in the keg to show up. Anyone with experience can shed some light? Thanks in advance. I also attached a photo.

day_trippr

Recipes 

The two valves appear closed. Did you close the regulator, too?

With everything closed, you could make up some soapy water or standard strength Star San/water solution and paint or spray all of the connections from the keg on out, looking for bubbles.

If you rock the closed up keg a bit you can encourage the beer to out-gas some of the CO2 dissolved in it from primary fermentation, might help bring out the bubbles...

Cheers!

[edit] I might have missed one or two, but there's like 16 joints there that have to be gas-tight. I don't think I have that many gas joints in my six faucet keezer

DrPhilGood

Recipes 

So i did a pressure test with star san and the elbow joint by the brass GAS inlet seems to be leaking. I took it apart and rewrapped telfon 6 times or so and tightened every joint as much as humanly possible and it is still leaking. Any insight? Could this valve be the issue?

day_trippr

Recipes 

Any leak in a natural carbing system is going to be a bad thing.

Are both the elbow and the valve tapered thread - or could one of them be straight thread? Or could one of them have a crack or significant casting defect?

Cheers!

DrPhilGood

Recipes 

There's no flare just straight thread. I'll try other pieces.

ThaBrewFather06

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Try some thread "dope" at lowes it's the thickness of molasses but it helps the thread tape seal even better. The only other thing I can think of is to get new pipe and fittings from lowes or your local ferguson or other plumbing supply store.

day_trippr

Recipes 

I dunno, I've taped the multitude of joints in my compressed air distribution lines and it holds ~120psi without leaks. I tried using pipe compound on my brew rig gas plumbing and you have to remove every trace of cutting oil for it to work as well as tape...

Cheers!

ThaBrewFather06

Recipes 

Is your tape and dope rated for 120+ psi? I'm a plumber so I never need that high of a pressure but I believe some tapes and dopes only go o 110-115 psi

day_trippr

Recipes 

I honestly have no clue about the white pipe tape - I have like four spools of it and none of them have any performance data on them.

Otoh, both the Rectorseal pipe dope and Oatey gas tape are well labeled (makes sense, things could go BOOM!) and are only rated to 100psig. But my gas rig only runs max 10psig anyway...

Cheers!

ThaBrewFather06

Recipes 

Oh ok I misread your post earlier i thought you said it's was leaking at 120psi. I honestly have no clue what your problem could be then. I'm very intrigued now so keep us posted if you figure it out and let me know. Thanks