Keg Problems!!?!?!!?!

Hey Folks,
I'm in a pinch. I have had my beer kegged about a week, force carbonating. I poured some yesterday and there is a lot of head on the beer but not really a lot of carbonation. I'm supposed to serve the beer tonight and I'm worried. Does anyone have any suggestion to get this beer carbonated. It's cold sitting in the kegerator. Please any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

You need a longer hose. What's happening is that the difference in pressure is causing your CO2 to come rapidly out of solution and create that large head. More hose will give you more backpressure so that the beer comes out slower. This will keep more CO2 in solution and give you a smaller head. I use about 8 feet of line on kegs that are at about 12 psi.

Try turning the serving PSI down until you get a good pour

Unfortunatly that is now the least of my problems. I tasted the beer and it was terrible!! I wouldn't let my dogs drink that. Thanks for the reply and the quick help, but the beer has now gone the way of the Doedoe.

Sorry to hear that, Jimbob. I guess now we have to get you brewing good beer. You've come to the right place for that. Why don't you start a thread giving us the recipe and your procedure and we'll see if we can pin down what went wrong? We'd like to see you get fixed up and brewing beer your dogs would LOVE!

...plus NEVER dump any brew without consulting us first...some brews aren't good until they've aged properly.

homebrewer_99 said:

...plus NEVER dump any brew without consulting us first...some brews aren't good until they've aged properly.

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....or given to us for sampling

I'm sorry, I was just wondering around and my Beer-Sense was tingling because I thought i felt the presence of someone dumping out beer.... good thing you guys got here in time... that was close.

you might need to pour off a few glasses before it's ready to serve also. That will clean any sediment that gathered at the bottom when it was chilled.

Jimbob said:

Unfortunatly that is now the least of my problems. I tasted the beer and it was terrible!! I wouldn't let my dogs drink that. Thanks for the reply and the quick help, but the beer has now gone the way of the Doedoe.

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Bummer, what was it and how did it taste bad?

One thing I didn't realize when I started kegging was that after you turn your PSI down to 2-5 for serving, you have to pull the pressure release on the keg before you serve it. Got quite a few glasses of foam until I figured it out.

I think the bad taste was oxization. Honesty it was terrible, I have brushed my teeth twice today trying to get the taste out of my mouth. I'm a bit worried as I have another batch which is show some similar taste characteristics. Trust me there was much wailing and nashing of teeth while the beer was being disposed of but when the wife said "That smells really weird" that was the nail in the coffin.

I'm wondering if this might be a result of some of my cleaning procedures. I've been using oxiclean to clean and iodophor to sanitize. I'm wondering if I've been using way too much oxiclean. The batch that I dumped was a Texas Blonde Ale, extract. It was the first full boil that I have done. The other batch is a Sam Adams Summer Ale Clone, which is my first all grain batch. Trust I'm not tossing this one until I get some "expert" opinions. Any
North Austin,TX brewer that might be willing to help out with this I would greatly appreciate it....otherwise I'm going to hit the HS tomorrow.

Some ideas...
Beer that is recently carbonated or slightly overcarbed will take on a bite from the carbonic acid. It mellows after a week or so.

You might be drinking a high concentration of yeast. How long was it in the fermenter before it went to keg?

It was in primary about two weeks and secondary about a week. Then kegged for about a week