Possible Keg Leak????

So I have more kegs than CO2 lines right now. I have 2 lines, 3 kegs with beer, and 1 keg with soda. One beer is only 4 days in the keg so I leave a CO2 line on it all the time. The other 2 beers are fully carb'd so I switch the line back and forth between them each day.
The 4th keg has cherry soda that I just made. I charged it to 30psi and let it fill for a couple minutes. Then I put the CO2 line back on a beer keg. I charged it to 30psi again the next morning and then again that evening.

Today, before I installed the CO2 line on the soda keg, I tried to tap a glass and it was just trickling out of the picnic spout. Shouldn't there still be a lot of pressure in there? Do I have a slow leak? This is my first use of this keg. I replaced all o-rings when I cleaned it. Is it possible that all the gas that I've been pumping in there has been absorbed into the soda and that is why the tapping pressure is low?

Thanks!

Don223 said:

... Is it possible that all the gas that I've been pumping in there has been absorbed into the soda and that is why the tapping pressure is low?

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Exactly.!

Bingo dude.

I did my first soda the other week to try out the new keg set up. From what I could gather, here's what I did and what I am doing differently:

What I did
- Mixed up my room temperature water and soda extract and sugar mix.
- Stuck it on CO2 and shook the crap out of it for about 15 minutes at 30 PSI.
- Put it in the fridge at 34F with 30PSI on it.
- Took a week to carb properly. It was a little fizzy the first day and progressively improved over the course of about a week.
- Left it at 30 PSI. After 2 week at that pressure, it was crazy fizzy. Too fizzy. I am using the swizzle sticks in the pickup tube too. Still too fizzy.
- Dropped the pressure to 15 PSI after purging the keg a few times by shaking, purging, shaking, purging ect about a dozen times. Left it there a couple days. Seems good to go.

What I am doing this time after reading a lot on soda:
- Carbonate the water BEFORE adding the syrup. CO2 has a problem carbing a sugar solution. I am sure there is science behind it, but what I read is that it takes longer.
- Setting it 20PSI for a week to carb up at 34F. That's about 3.5 volumes of CO2. Seems right to me. We'll see. Everyone likes it differently.
- Leaving out about a gallon of the recipe batch size to account for the soda extract plus the water needed to dissolve the sugar. Batch is 4 gallons. Carbing 3 gallons, giving 2 gallons of space for foaming up in case the sugar and extract causes a reaction, but I am going to pour it slowly.

Hope that helps! Enjoy the new hobby!

Dean

dinokath said:

- Carbonate the water BEFORE adding the syrup. CO2 has a problem carbing a sugar solution. I am sure there is science behind it, but what I read is that it takes longer.
- Setting it 20PSI for a week to carb up at 34F. That's about 3.5 volumes of CO2. Seems right to me. We'll see. Everyone likes it differently.
- Leaving out about a gallon of the recipe batch size to account for the soda extract plus the water needed to dissolve the sugar. Batch is 4 gallons. Carbing 3 gallons, giving 2 gallons of space for foaming up in case the sugar and extract causes a reaction, but I am going to pour it slowly.

Hope that helps! Enjoy the new hobby!

Dean

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CO2 doesn't have a problem carbing up a sugar solution. Why would it? The problem is that soda is much more highly carbed than beer, and it takes more psi to get you to that highly carbed "soda" fizz. You don't need any headspace in the keg- it won't foam up in the keg. In a 39 degree fridge, my soda is usually at 30 psi, but I know that David_42 says his is more like 40 psi to get the soda carbed correctly. This is after a week or two of constant 30 psi, of course. You need to keep the gas on- taking it off means the soda won't keep carbing up. A higher psi requires much more beverage line than a typical beer at 11 psi- I use about 25' of line for soda but only 8' of line for beer.

I dont know why it would have a problem carbing a sugar solution. That's what I read. I guess it's like anything else on the internet - you never know what maniac is sitting at the keyboard giving bad advice! Thanks for that.

dinokath said:

I dont know why it would have a problem carbing a sugar solution. That's what I read. I guess it's like anything else on the internet - you never know what maniac is sitting at the keyboard giving bad advice! Thanks for that.

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Er. Thanks.

No, I really mean that sincerely. 26,469 posts tells me you probably know just a little something about all this! I didn't mean to imply you were THE maniac at the keyboard!

dinokath said:

No, I really mean that sincerely. 26,469 posts tells me you probably know just a little something about all this! I didn't mean to imply you were THE maniac at the keyboard!

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I know. I'm kidding you. But 26,469 posts sounds really pathetic. I need to get a life.

I've brewed some beer. I've kegged some beer. So far, so good!

Yooper_Brew said:

I've brewed some beer. I've kegged some beer. So far, so good!

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And some beer. I can vouch for that.

Beer ... 2.5 volumes, soda is usually served at 4-6 volumes which is about double the carbonation. That is a lot of CO2. If you want to carb by shaking I would say get it as cold as you can and shake it like it owes you money at 40 PSI for 5 minutes. Or, be patient and wait a week at 30+ PSI.