Keeping Pressure Down

Hey guys, I'm having some trouble keeping my C02 pressure correct. I have a light ale on tap right now, it's my first batch ever. I set the pressure at say about 11.5 and it will stay there for about 4 hours. Then, say when I wake up and check it the pressure has risen in the tank to about 18 psi.

Can someone help me out? I lower the pressure down, purge the tank, and up the pressure until I get to about 11.5, then tighten the nut down to lock it in. It always goes up though, I can't figure it out.

The thing that is gettin me is that i'm in thermodynamics right now, which basically all I do is work out pressure problems in seal systems. The temperature is constant in the fridge, the liquid volume changes as I drink but that shouldn't change it as it is replaced with more C02. I don't know what else to do.

Any tips?

Your regulator is probably broken or stuck. Umm you didn't do the overpressure and shake method to carbonate, did you?

Loosen the lock nut, turn the regulator all the way down to zero and back it off to the pressure you want. If this doesn't work, you probably need a new regulator or will have to switch to lagers.

Is it possible it came out of secondary too early, and it is self carbonating, ie: still fermenting?

It's a brand new regulator. But that doesn't mean that it can't be broken. But the brew went through a week in primary, then two weeks and three days in secondary. It's a dual guage regulator giving me tank pressure and keg pressure.

I lowered the pressure, purged the system, then upped the pressure to 10 psi. Next morning it was at 15 psi. I'm stumped.

Mikey said:

Your regulator is probably broken or stuck. Umm you didn't do the overpressure and shake method to carbonate, did you?

Click to expand...

Good point. I tried this and on the first shake I saw beer back flowing into the gas line. I stopped before the beer got into the regulator but it was close. I've never seen a warning about beer coming out of the keg in any of the instructions for this method.
I'm guessing as well that the regulator is faulty. Have you tried disconnecting the keg and seeing what the pressure does? If it still creeps up I would definitely suspect the regulator

I had similar problems...and all were resolved the day my new regulator showed up UPS.

You can buy rebuild kits for regulators rather than having to buy another brand new one. I rebuilt mine not too long ago (it was doing exactly what you describe) and now works perfectly.

we kegged our first beer last night and were having the same problem. in our case, something was obstructing ,for lack of a better term, the "valve" inside the regulator. it just kept building pressure. so we took everything off the regulator, then took it off. i have a nipple and a bell reducer, so we threaded that onto the co2 bottle. then we twisted the out portion of the regulator onto the nipple and opened the bottle up quite a bit. then took the regulator off, and put the other out port on the nipple and did the same. i think it was probably a piece of teflon tape stuck in there, but whatever it was it blew it out. works like a charm now.