2 perlicks and one foams

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

bguzz

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2008
Messages
134
Reaction score
8
I have a tower with 2 perlick 525ss faucets. They both have 6 feet of 3/16 line and are fed off the same regulator. One works perfect and the other foams the first beer then poors fine. 15 minutes later it foams it again. Seem worst when you first pull it. Any idea what could be causing this? I clean the lines with BLC and sanitize with starsan. This seems to be getting worse.
 
To help narrow down the problem and eliminate the perlicks from the equation.....swap the lines on the kegs, pull enough beer to refill the lines with the desired beer, wait 15 minutes and see if happens to the same tap or moves to the other one. Many factors determine if a beer is foamy. Could be the system...could be the beer itself.
 
+1 for line swapping... Is it alwasy on the same keg on the same tap with any beer you pour or is this the first time ? Did you force carb the beer ?
 
I have only 2 kegs, and I'm not sure if I've ever had them always on the same tap. I did force carb the beer. I left it at 20psi for 3 days then 15 psi for 2, it doesn't taste overcarbed, but could that be the case? Immediately after a foam pull it pours fine until it is left for 15 minutes or so.
 
Without knowing anything about your set up I have some thoughts. it has been my experience that the first pour in a while is because because the beer is sitting right at the base of the faucet and is warming up slightly. Any temperature increase will promote foaming. Once you push that beer out then the temperature will be back to what you expect it to be. There is not a good solution to this problem that doesn't involve uglycol. Not sure why this would affect one faucet and not the other except to say that the temperature in either the kegerator and the tower may not be homogenous Second thought is that your dispense pressure is not sufficient to keep the CO2 in the beer completely in solution. If the head pressure is lower than the pressure in the beer then the CO2 will start coming out of solution and gas will start traveling up the beer line. Over time this gas will accumulate at the faucet. Thus a brief period of foamy beer. If this is what's happening you should be able to see tiny bubbles rising in your line. If your faucet sort of burps and there's a slight delay before the foam starts flowing this is almost certainly what the problem is. You fix the problem by balancing the pressure either by raising the dispense pressure or by bleeding off the pressure in the keg to reduce the dissolved CO2. Check your beer temperature and consult your carbonation chart. The atmospheres of dissolved gas might be slightly different in the two kegs which would explain why you're having the problem in one faucet and not the other. A third thought is that the foamy line is dirty and is creating nucleation sites where gas is coming out of solution which makes it look likes problem number two. A fourth thought is that the beer lines are not the same length. This would produce different pour characteristics.

And, of course, could be a combination of factors.

FWIW, I've found that using longer lines to increase flow resistance allows me to keep 2.4 atmospheres in the beer without is flying out of the faucet. Started with 5' lines but now use 8.5'. Solves the tiny bubbles problem. Check the 'net or this board for links to articles describing how to balance your system.

This can be a pesky and frustrating problem. And, as always, your mileage may vary.

Cheers!
 
A lot will be answered with swapping the QDs between kegs. Should have been done already.

I have six Perls and they're so dead simple they should always be the last thing fingered when there's a foam problem...

Cheers!

[btw: If there was something pithy in that text wall, maybe someone can post a synopsis]
 
Yeah, switching the lines is easy and will tell you a lot.

I use Perlicks as well and love them.

Sorry about the text wall - got carried away.
 
nealperkins said:
and different styles foam different amounts...

All my Perlicks must be cooled just a bit to substantially reduce the foam.

Yeah, you are right about the different styles. I pour a fairly narrow range of beers but I need to remember that. I have the luxury of having a separate regulator for each of my three lines. So I can adjust one beer without worrying about the others.

What do you do to chill the faucets?

Cheers!
 
I pour my first beer through it.
OK, for the really foamy ones, I pour a couple ounces, wait a few seconds, then pour the rest. And, I'm not saying this is a perfect solution but it does help a bit. . . . and, it's a bit frustrating!
 
Yeah, I do that as well. Pour off a couple of ounces of very heady beer into a tumbler then shift to the pint glass. I let the foam in the tumbler settle then drink it.

Cheers
 
I used to pour off the first couple ounces of foam, but then added a small muffin fan to cool my tower, but it sometimes interferes with things when I'm changing kegs out. I just bought an aquarium air pump I plan on replacing the fan with, which I can mount lower so that it doesn't interfere (and where it will draw colder air).
 
Back
Top