Carbonation: WAY too much foam...ideas??

I'm down to my 'last resort' here.

I bought a direct draw 4 keg cooler and have plans to get all 4 taps up and running eventually with home brew. For starters, I bought a keg of domestic light beer for use at a party, and to fine tune the kegging system.

The problem I'm having is that there is WAY too much foam in the beer. Instead of the nice 3/4" head, I'm getting around 4-6" of foam. I've got the liquid temperature right at 38 degrees.

I tried turning UP the co2 level to 14 psi. That didn't work. I bled the valve on the keg...tried to turn it DOWN to 10psi...still nothing. Finally, I replaced the co2 valve and apparently that may have been faulty as the new guage initially read 22psi!!!

Again, I bled the keg and set my psi to 12. I still have problems though. Can anyone provide me with any other advice of what I can try?! Should I completely shut off the co2 to the keg and bleed it off? Wouldn't that cause the beer to go flat?

Thanks in advance for any help...

How long are your serving lines and what is the inside diameter? You should be running something like 10 feet of 3/16" ID tubing.

Generally speaking, you set the pressure to achieve a desired carbonation level, then vary the line length/diameter in order to get a good pour.

You'll usually want to set 8-12 psi. 8 psi will lightly carbonate the beer, and 12 psi will make it pretty effervescent. This page will help you with the correct pressure, given a particular style and serving temperature.

Then you need to balance the system with the correct line length. 6 to 10 feet of 3/16" ID line should work. Start with 10 feet, and slowly trim it back until you have an acceptable pour. This page might help you fine tune the system.

Hmm, thanks for the tips guys. I'm running 3/16" beer line at a length of 5 feet. Using the chart provided, I came up with a "suggested" length of 3.61 feet. (I'm happy to have someone check my math, but I think everything is correct)

12psi, 2.5' from middle of keg to faucet, and 3/16" beer line which brings a 2.7 resistance factor.

Now the thing is, this chart tells me my beer line, at 5' currently is too LONG while Bobby is suggesting I might be too SHORT.

Any further thoughts?

Bobby_M didn't suggest your line was too long. Re-read his post. He just asked how longnthey wrre. Trim your lines back to teh sggested length on the chart and report back

IrregularPulse said:

Bobby_M didn't suggest your line was too long. Re-read his post. He just asked how longnthey wrre. Trim your lines back to teh sggested length on the chart and report back

Click to expand...

That will have the opposite effect -- shorter beer lines mean more foam, not less. My thought is, this is a domestic light beer he's pouring -- it's probably already got two and a half volumes of CO2 in it. The last thing he needs to do, IMHO, is force more gas into that stuff. I would suggest cutting the gas pressure back to about 5 psi. You want just enough to get it out of the keg. If it starts acting a little flat, turn it back up a bit.

Good luck!

--Finn

If your first reg was faulty, then you may have really overcarbed your beer. it will take multiple bleed-offs of pressure, and TIME (possibly up to 12 hours) to drop the carb level to serving pressure.

I didn't look at the chart, but I know I'd get nothing but foam with 3-4 ft of 3/16" line at your temp and pressure. I also need 6-8 ft at those settings for a foam free pour.

Also, you can drop the pressure to 5 psi as suggested temporarily, but if you leave it there too long, the beer will begin to go flat.

OK, so I backed the pressure off to 5psi overnight. It was better, but I'm now getting foam coming out of the tap in spurts.

You guys still think it's overcarbonated beer and I should keep it dialed down or might it be something else?