Beer line, does it carbonate?

Random q, couldn't find anything on the interwebs: does the beer in the beer lines carbonate like the rest of the keg? If I take an early sample from the keg, is the beer in the line at the same carb level as in the keg?

I'm going to guess: No.

But even with a 10 foot 3/16" ID beer line, you're worrying about less than two ounces of beer.

"Set 'n forget" carbing is how I roll. "Tap no keg before its time" is my motto...

Cheers!

Hi

Yes, of course it carbonates. The CO2 slowly dissolves in all the beer. If it takes a couple of weeks to get to the bottom of a keg, it should get to the end of the beer line in a year or less...

It's a surface area to volume sort of thing. Unless you have a pump or circulation from some other source, diffusion is all you are going to get. Large surface area / small volume = carbs fast. Small surface area large volume = carbs slow...

Bob

coypoo said:

[...]If I take an early sample from the keg, is the beer in the line at the same carb level as in the keg?

Click to expand...

I just reread this, and it's a completely different question than the title and the first question.

If you hook up a keg and draw a sample, it will be more or less representative of the carbonation level - at least near the end of the Out dip tube. Caveats include explosive overcarbonation that causes a cascade effect knocking most of the carbonation out of solution...etc.

Otoh, if you hooked up a flat keg to, say, a picnic tap, drew enough to fill the tap line, and then started the carbonation process, I expect it would be a long, long time before any sign of carbonation made it the length of the tap line...

Cheers!

Cool, thanks for the responses. I didn't think it would either, but I'm wrong a lot. Thanks!