Foamy Root Beer

Hi,

So I made root beer recently and have been having a foam problem with it. Here is what I did. 30 PSI for 3 days at about 40 Degrees. I took it out set it to 3 PSI and tried serving. I'm only using a 2 - 3 foot hose for dispensing. It comes out, but very foamy. To the point where it takes a few minuets to get rid of the foam. Any help would be appreciated.

ptpeter15 said:

Hi,

So I made root beer recently and have been having a foam problem with it. Here is what I did. 30 PSI for 3 days at about 40 Degrees. I took it out set it to 3 PSI and tried serving. I'm only using a 2 - 3 foot hose for dispensing. It comes out, but very foamy. To the point where it takes a few minuets to get rid of the foam. Any help would be appreciated.

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Soda is carbed much higher than beer. I use 25-30 feet of line for soda. 2-3 feet will not work for soda.

Thanks for the info, but here's a question then. How would I serve this at a party? Do I really bring 30 feet of flexible hose with me to serve soda?

ptpeter15 said:

Thanks for the info, but here's a question then. How would I serve this at a party? Do I really bring 30 feet of flexible hose with me to serve soda?

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Well, it needs to be kept cold, too, or it will foam. Maybe if it's really, really cold it'll foam less.

I have some tubing from McMaster-Carr I use for soda (it was $.15 cents a food!) and it's pretty rigid in a circle so it just coils up on top of the keg. If you want to serve it with short lines, chilling it more might help and try pushing it with as little pressure on the keg as possible- just enough to push it out.

You still might have some foaming, though, because of the high amount of co2 getting "knocked out" of the soda on the way to the glass. When you dispense a highly carbed beverage through a short hose, it's like shaking the soda up in a way. The soda bounces around the line and comes out like a firehose.

I've heard that different types of lines can have different levels of foaming. Sorry, I don't know much more than that, but I read somewhere once that a guy running lines across multiple rooms had to switch out to a different type of tubing to get proper carbonation.

Then again, you probably have the exact opposite of that problem... so maybe that other type of line would make it worse!

I'd go with what Yoop has to say, use more line and coil it on top/on the side of the keg. Maybe use zip-ties to secure it out of the way?

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