CO2 issues!

Hello everyone! I have an issue and would love someone to unravel this mystery for me. I have a kegerator and recently placed a 1/2 barrel of store bought beer in it. For some reason when I pour the beer it never seems to get a good mix of co2. I will get a head but there will not be any significant carbonation. What am I doing wrong? What can I do/buy to fix this issue?

Tell us your procedures for racking your beer to kegs? A lot of brewers will put the beer in corny kegs, chill them in a kegerator and dial up about 30 psi for a few days to force carbonate their beer (shaking the cold keg once or twice). Then, they dial back the serving pressure to about 10 psi.

What pressure is the keg at and how long has it been there? It should have come from the distributor fully carbed and ready to drink. If it's lost carbonation, you may have the pressure too low.

Ok you got me! I am a complete novice! I did not know there were steps. Normally i turn off the co2 remove the old keg, connect the new keg and turn the co2 back on. My kegerator is a frosty keg and the beer i am attempting to enjoy is new Belgium, ranger ipa. I don't know If any of this helps.

You say it's store-bought beer, but you don't mention that you have a co2 tank and pressure regulator.

If you don't have these, you need to get them to provide pressure to push out the beer, and to keep it carbonated until the keg is empty.

If you do have these, increase the pressure on the regulator until you get a good pour. Try to find out the recommended pressure for your beer style. Raise the pressure slowly over a couple of days, otherwise you may overshoot, leading to a foamfest.

Tiger229 said:

Ok you got me! I am a complete novice! I did not know there were steps. Normally i turn off the co2 remove the old keg, connect the new keg and turn the co2 back on. My kegerator is a frosty keg and the beer i am attempting to enjoy is new Belgium, ranger ipa. I don't know If any of this helps.

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Well we cross-posted and now I see that you have a co2 tank. At this point:
- find out the recommended pressure for your beer, and set your regulator accordingly
- make sure the co2 tank is full and there are no leaks

I do have a co2 tank, its a 5 lb tank, the kegerator has a two gauge co2 regulator, i really only tinker with the pressure rarely, so I'm not sure how to make it work right or what i should be looking at?