My Kegged Beer is Too Foamy

I'm kind of new at kegging and learning more as i go but recently i may have run into a little problem. It may be too early to say but my beer is way too foamy at 10-12psi.

I'll walk you through what i did:

I have a kegco kegerator with the dial set to the coldest setting (i believe they go to 38 degrees but i cant confirm mine is that cold).
Monday I syphoned a blueberry ale into the keg
attached the gas and set the pressure to 25psi
Let the keg sit over night to get it cold
Next day in an attempt to force carb i shook it for 15 mins (i thought that was the standard but now im thinking that was too long).
last night I dialed the psi down to 0
i pulled the pressure release to equalize the keg
attached my beer line
Opened the faucet
increased the psi up to 10-12psi to adjust for the pour

At this point the beer was mostly foam so i dialed it down to 8 psi and it was a little better but now the pour is super slow (and still a little foamy).

Is it because i shook it too long?
Is it over carbonated? based on the bubbles it almost doesnt seem carbonated enough.
Could my faucet be too warm?
Should i have waited longer to test?

If anyone has any videos they recommend or books on kegging? I didnt check to see if John Palmer has a section yet though im sure he does. Going to do that next.

But any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

drop the pressure down to 3-4PSI and give it a pour. if it's still all foam then it's over-carbed. you can turn off the gas, keep pulling the relief and vent some CO2 or you can shake it some to help it come out faster. be careful with the shaking because when you pull the relief you may get a ton of beer out. i over carb mine lots because i get in a rush to drink it. LOL

Does it get better after a few pours? Doesn't sound like over carbonation.

Check your dip tube and your lid seal. A buddy had all foam recently in his kegerator and when I pulled the dip tube out there was a ding in the flange at the top. Just enough to suck air into the system when pouring. It foamed like crazy. Once we swapped it out it poured perfectly.

My recommendation is to check out the sticky threads up at the top of the kegging forum. It's either overcarbed or your serving lines are way too short (probably both).

Thanks JD i'll give that a try later when i get home. When i pull the pin to reduce carb should i disconnect the gas? or leave that attached? and at what level?

Kapbrew, i'm not totally sure i'll have to try that as well. So far i just tried two glasses last night. i didnt want to waste any lol so i just waited for the foam to die down and drank it. After the foam went down though it was a little carbonated but it wasnt anything ferocious.

I really have to get a temp strip to leave in the fridge so i can see what temp it really is. How do i test when it comes out of the faucet? i've read that you lose some temperature to the pour and if its too warm it could make it foamy as well. I do have the fridge next to a heater (bad spot), but its the only place we really have room for it at the moment.

Thanks for the replies.

I'll take a look at that Bobby, thanks.

mkozlowski said:

Thanks JD i'll give that a try later when i get home. When i pull the pin to reduce carb should i disconnect the gas? or leave that attached? and at what level?

Kapbrew, i'm not totally sure i'll have to try that as well. So far i just tried two glasses last night. i didnt want to waste any lol so i just waited for the foam to die down and drank it. After the foam went down though it was a little carbonated but it wasnt anything ferocious.

I really have to get a temp strip to leave in the fridge so i can see what temp it really is. How do i test when it comes out of the faucet? i've read that you lose some temperature to the pour and if its too warm it could make it foamy as well. I do have the fridge next to a heater (bad spot), but its the only place we really have room for it at the moment.

Thanks for the replies.

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you can disconnect the gas or you can just turn it off. keep pulling the relief every hour or so. may take up to a day to get it right. then turn the gas back on and set your serving pressure.

There's also a utube vid on how to correct over carbonation. You could try that too. How long are you beer lines?

Will check out the youtube vid... i watched some others on kegging but everyone seems to have their own opinion on it. Which makes it tricky... have to try a bunch of things and figure what works.

The lines though are the ones that came with the unit. I'll check the documentation later when i get home but if i had to guess id say they were 5 feet.

I'd say you definitely overcarbed it. From your description, it sounds like you left it at 25 psi when you shook up the keg. If so, that was where you went wrong. For burst carbing, you should have lowered the regulator to serving pressure first (usually 10-12 psi, or thereabouts), then shake, roll, etc.

To correct, turn off the gas and vent repeatedly over several days until the carb level gets to where you want it, then put it back on the gas at serving/set-and-forget pressure and leave it there.

mkozlowski said:

The lines though are the ones that came with the unit. I'll check the documentation later when i get home but if i had to guess id say they were 5 feet.

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Yep....

Bobby_M said:

My recommendation is to check out the sticky threads up at the top of the kegging forum. It's either overcarbed or your serving lines are way too short (probably both).

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This.

mkozlowski said:

After the foam went down though it was a little carbonated but it wasnt anything ferocious.

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Overcarbed beer usually tastes fairly flat, since most of the carbonation gets lost in the form of foam.

And as mentioned, when burst carbing it's usually best to either turn the pressure up for a day or two, or to shake the keg at serving pressure. Shaking at a higher pressure puts a lot of gas into the beer very quickly, making it very hard to control just how much carbonation you're adding, and more often than not results in overcarbonated beer.

Just wanted to send out an update. I found a video on correcting over carbed beer. Well several actually but the one that seemed to help was disconnecting both lines, purging the pressure from the keg with the pin, reconnecting the gas to the out this time add pressure until it stops bubbling, purge the gas and repeat until foam starts to come out of the pin a little bit. Then put the lines back to what they should be. After doing this the beer poured perfectly at 10-12psi.

The second glass though was back to being a little foamy. Not as bad as it was originally but still more foam than it should have. So I'm guessing I should repeat that process from earlier until it gets more consistent?

I have 10' supply lines and have never had a problem... lengthen your lines.

Only thing I would add to the good advice already given is to make sure that when you pour you open the faucet/tap all of the way. If you only open it part way (to try and control foaming, for example) it will foam.