Beer in my regulator.

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BillyRaygun

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Have a MicroMatic dual gage regulator. I got beer in it. Poured right out of it. What can I do to fix it?
 
Well, I have problems taking it apart to clean it. Nothing appears to have gone into the gauges. I rinsed out my gas lines and am letting them dry. So I will see if I can salvage this regulator.

I'm rather embarrassed and am thinking, if I only shut the valve off before the regulator, I would have been fine. I bet anyone I will use that valve next time. :)
 
granpooba19 said:
Ah, my mistake . . . I thought it had gone into the gauges
Click to expand...

No. Not into the gauges. Well, at there was no beer floating inside the gauges. I took them both apart and they were dry. Not sure if any got in the tiny hole on the brass nub, but I don't think so.

Do you with some gentle cleaning I'll be good?
 
sudbuster said:
Rinse it out with a spray bottle of plain water by shooting it into the orfice the beer went in, then let it set open to the air for a few days. I speak from experience :eek:
Click to expand...

I can't speak from experience, but I guess if spraying water into the orifice where the beer went into won't get into the gauges, that would work, I would see if others weigh in before trying anything
 
granpooba19 said:
I can't speak from experience, but I guess if spraying water into the orifice where the beer went into won't get into the gauges, that would work, I would see if others weigh in before trying anything
Click to expand...

Well, I just took as much of the regulator apart as I could and everything seems to be ok. I ran some water through the body of the regulator without any gauges or the pressure release valve and dried it the best I could by blowing air through all the openings. Nothing is sticking and it all went back together perfectly.

I'll follow up shortly. I'm going to reconnect everything and see how it goes.
 
Well, so far so good. I have complete control over the sensitivity of the pressure. The second gauge seems to be measuring the volume in the Co2 tank properly. Nothing sticks and my keg is under pressure again; no leaks.

My only concern is that I have a tiny bit of moisture in the gas line from rinsing out the beer. I'm hoping this will dry out eventually. If not, I may just replace the gas line.

Because I actually caused the beer to leak into the regulator, and saw it happen right in front of me in real time, I was able to shut the valve to the regulator which stopped the flow. So the beer sat in the line and regulator as long as it took me to disconnect everything and clean it - less than an hour.

I may have got very lucky or I'll experience problems in the near future. I'm pretty confident things are ok. But as I said before, I won't forget about the shut off valve a second time.
 
Ok I get using the shut off valve at the exit of the regulator but to help prevent others from doing the same thing, how did this happen? Tank valve off or the regulator not connected to the tank so there was no pressure? If the tank was connected I don't see how this could happen as the tank would have more pressure than the keg. Since it seems like you are not the only person to do this I want to make sure I don't do it.

Thanks
 
Yeah, its pretty easy to get back flow if you aren't paying attention. Good thing is that the regs are pretty easy to clean, really nothing to be scared of like people want you to be. Just unscrew the main cap, clean out the inside and put it back together again. You may have to replace a gasket or o-ring if they are buggered up. Just use this diagram under the "replacement parts" tab:

http://www.micromatic.com/draft-keg-beer/regulators-pid-642-Battery.html
 
It was a stupid mistake on my part. I wanted to carbonate the beer while conditioning a couple weeks in the keg so I connected the gas line. But I connected the gas to the wrong post. As I was thinking about the force needed to make the connection, I didn't remember it being that hard to connect. So I knew I did something wrong. And being this is only the second time I kegged, I just wasn't familiar enough with my equipment to recognize my mistake at the time.

Getting the connector on the post was harder then normal, but not near as hard as it was to get it off. In the process of trying to disconnect the gas line, I turned off the gas at the tank because my connection was half on, half off due to my situation - gas and beer was spraying out at the connection. At the same time, I forgot to close the valve just before the regulator. So you are right, pressure was higher in the keg. This is why the beer flowed backwards.

I since compared posts more closely trying to familiarize myself more with the force required to connect and disconnect lines from each post. Bottom line, multiple things went wrong and could have easily been avoided if I just slowed down, focused and was more familiar with my equipment.
 
Don't worry about it, I think most folks who keg have made this mistake once...kind of like riding a motorcycle, you will drop the bike, sort of a right of passage. Of course, I never dropped a bike while I rode, but I have backflowed a regulator twice to make up for it :).
 
Bensiff said:
Yeah, its pretty easy to get back flow if you aren't paying attention. Good thing is that the regs are pretty easy to clean, really nothing to be scared of like people want you to be. Just unscrew the main cap, clean out the inside and put it back together again. You may have to replace a gasket or o-ring if they are buggered up. Just use this diagram under the "replacement parts" tab:

http://www.micromatic.com/draft-keg-beer/regulators-pid-642-Battery.html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. I have this exact same regulator, but a single unit. This is a good example of how I disassembled the regulator but without the help of the exploded view. These regulators are a lot less scary then people make them out to be. They are mechanical but if someone isn't intimidated by the mechanics, they can be cleaned easily.

Its good to know i can purchase replacement parts if needed rather than a whole new regulator. I never would have expected that. The positive of all this is that I am much more familiar with my equipment. More so then I probably would have ever thought I would need.
 
BillyRaygun said:
The positive of all this is that I am much more familiar with my equipment. More so then I probably would have ever thought I would need.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the average brewer was the type of kid who took their dad's drill apart to see how it worked and now they found a hobby that gave them an excuse to tell their wife why they just tore something apart...we still know we are doing it mostly to see how it works :)
 
BillyRaygun said:
It was a stupid mistake on my part. I wanted to carbonate the beer while conditioning a couple weeks in the keg so I connected the gas line. But I connected the gas to the wrong post. As I was thinking about the force needed to make the connection, I didn't remember it being that hard to connect. So I knew I did something wrong. And being this is only the second time I kegged, I just wasn't familiar enough with my equipment to recognize my mistake at the time.

Getting the connector on the post was harder then normal, but not near as hard as it was to get it off. In the process of trying to disconnect the gas line, I turned off the gas at the tank because my connection was half on, half off due to my situation - gas and beer was spraying out at the connection. At the same time, I forgot to close the valve just before the regulator. So you are right, pressure was higher in the keg. This is why the beer flowed backwards.

I since compared posts more closely trying to familiarize myself more with the force required to connect and disconnect lines from each post. Bottom line, multiple things went wrong and could have easily been avoided if I just slowed down, focused and was more familiar with my equipment.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks for the reply on what happened. I have my first beer in primary now so I have a while before I will be ready to do my first FC so this helps. Not sure if you have ball locks or pin locks but I think for me I will try to remember to pull the pressure relief on the keg before coupling it. I also have a shutoff on my regulator and each of the outputs on my gas distribution block so I have a few places where I can cut the gas flow or prevent a backflow condition. So far I have only worked with commercial kegs so it isn't as easy to do this unless I were to hook up the lines backwards to the coupler.

I had seen rebuild kits (O-rings and diaphragm) and have been thinking about refurbishing a double regulator that I got on an auction. It is old and a little beat up. It would be nice to switch over to this one though so I can run two pressures (conditioning and serving) since I am set up to run 3 taps at once.
 

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