Help with first-time force carbing and kegging

Hey all,

I would greatly appreciate some advice here.
I just got a 5gal corny keg and am force carbing for the first time.
The coldest that I am able to get the beer in my keg down to is 52' F.
I am trying to carb an IPA.
Beersmith tells me to have the pressure at ~20psi @ ~52' F. It has been sitting at this pressure for about 10 days.

I am trying to pour a beer to test it for carbonation (plus I'm thirsty ) and I am getting 90% foam. The resulting beer in the glass is just as flat as you would expect it to be after all that foaming.

I am using ~6 feet of 3/8" beer line with a cobra tap.
I am serving at 5 - 10 psi (i've tried everything in between).

So, what can I try to get this beer to relax and quit foaming?
Does it matter whether the cobra tap sits above or below the keg?

I took it off of the 20psi, vented the pressure from the keg, and then immediately put the co2 back on at 10psi for serving. Does it need time to rest?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Do you have any longer serving lines? 10 ft maybe? I never have it that warm so I'm not sure what impact that has.

You should be using 3/16" beer line, not 3/8" line, or you'd need over 100 feet of line to balance the serving pressure.

Here is a helpful page which talks about figuring out the right beer line length. This will allow you to achieve an ideal pour. Mike Soltys in the comments section posted a calculator on Google Docs which is the most comprehensive calculator I've seen for doing this. I just leave all the entries beneath the hose length unchanged.
http://beersmith.com/blog/2011/07/14/keg-line-length-balancing-the-science-of-draft-beer/

Another benefit of balancing line lengths is that you won't need to purge the CO2 and adjust the regulator pressure for serving, you can just serve at the same pressure that you've been carbonating the beer at (assuming you're carbonating via the set-and-forget method). If you don't want to deal with calculating the line length, try 10 feet of 3/16" line and if it pours too slowly, trim it a little and try again.

Also I use this chart for knowing what pressure to force carbonate at for different styles and temps... but it sounds like Beersmith does this for you already:
http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

@jabbot Thanks!
I just checked the line and it is 3/16". My bad.
After looking at that table from the second link, I think I overshot the pressure and should have had it at 16 - 18psi.
If the beer is indeed overcarbonated now, do I need to shake, bleed pressure, repeat? or can I just reduce the pressure that's sitting on it and wait?

Thanks again for the help! Sorry to be that noob.

I think your problem is that you forced carbed for 10 days. At 20psi I think 48 hours is plenty. I do 30psi for 36 and then set to serving pressure after purging the keg. You should disconnect the gas and purge the keg and let it sit for 24 hours. Check the carbonation every 12 or 24 hours and purge.

I wouldn't consider 20 PSI to be that over-carbed if you were shooting for 16-18 PSI... other than trying a longer line length, or periodically warming and purging until the pressure gets to where you want it to be, you should also inspect the inside of your beer line quick disconnect to make sure it isn't obstructing flow. Some of the plastic ones aren't molded properly when they're made and as such they turn carbonated beer going through them into lots of foam. See the reviews at the link below which talk about the problem in more detail:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/review/product/list/id/4272/

Here is a QD disassembly guide:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/ball-lock-quick-disconnects-exploded-view-261615/

Another thing is to make sure you're opening the tap all the way to dispense instead of just partially opening it.

Same thing happened to me, I tried to force carbonate for 5 days at 30 PSI and then burped the keg (but I think I actually let all the pressure out). Then turned the pressure to 18 PSI and it's still flat. I guess it never got carbonated, so I'm just leaving it alone on 15 PSI now and checking it once a day.

It's going to be near impossible to serve without excessive foam with a moderately high carbonation level at that temperature. The warmer the beer is, or the more carbonated, the more the CO2 wants to come out of solution and cause foaming. This means that you'll need extremely long lines to slow the pour down to a snails pace to minimize the foam, and even then it will still likely foam quite a bit. If I were you I'd be looking at ways to get the beer colder, or shoot for a lower carbonation level, or both. If you're sure you want that serving temp, and 2.5-2.6 vol, then you're gonna need 25-30' lines, or maybe slightly shorter if you use the epoxy mixer sticks in the diptube. And to answer your question about where to hold the cobra faucet, the higher you can hold it, the more resistance gravity will provide, making the pour slower and hopefully minimizing the foam.

BansheeRider said:

I think your problem is that you forced carbed for 10 days. At 20psi I think 48 hours is plenty. I do 30psi for 36 and then set to serving pressure after purging the keg. You should disconnect the gas and purge the keg and let it sit for 24 hours. Check the carbonation every 12 or 24 hours and purge.

Click to expand...

At 52° and 20 psi, the maximum carbonation level that it could have reached is 2.61 vol. At that warm temp, 48hrs at 20psi would have barely carbonated the beer at all. Your process and pressures don't correlate well to what I'd guess is a vastly different serving temperature from yours.

jabbott said:

Here is a helpful page which talks about figuring out the right beer line length. This will allow you to achieve an ideal pour. Mike Soltys in the comments section posted a calculator on Google Docs which is the most comprehensive calculator I've seen for doing this. I just leave all the entries beneath the hose length unchanged.
http://beersmith.com/blog/2011/07/14/keg-line-length-balancing-the-science-of-draft-beer/

Click to expand...

The beersmith article is misleading and not very good for homebrewers IMO, but the Mike Soltys spreadsheet in the comments section is awesome. The hard part is figuring out the pint fill time that won't create foaming for a specific temperature and carbonation level.