I think I over carbonated my keg

Problem of the day; I recently kegged on June 30th for the first time. I checked on it this morning and the floor behind my bar was sticky and not a drop was left of the 4 gallons that was in my keg. Let me give you a run down of the situation and if there are any tips you guys can give me I would love it...

I kegged a little over 4 gallons on June 30.
Force carbonated @ 30 psi for 2 days.
Everything was great to this point.
Turned the psi down to serving pressure (10 psi) on July 2 and left it there.
Today (7/5/12) I went down to my bar, the floor was sticky, keg was empty and CO2 container was empty.

Should I have cut off the CO2 after it was carbonated until I was ready to drink it?

Should my CO2 regulator be ok? I've heard stories about beer shooting back into the regulator. How would I know if that happened?

I can't express how frustrated I am. If I didn't love this "hobby" so much I would have said screw it this morning. Oh well! I'll keep plugging away and one day I'll make a batch with out botching something up. Any like stories might make me feel better also.

Cheers!

That has absolutely nothing to do with overcarbonation.... not even close.

You obviously have a leak or a bad connection somewhere. What's your set-up like? Was there anything connected to the "Liquid Out" poppit on your keg?

Hi

First thing on the list of leaky places to check - did you leave a washer out someplace? MFL's and beer nuts both are well known for causing them to transport into another dimension just before you screw things down.

Next up would be hose clamps. A good quick check is to see if you can twist the hose on the barb. If you can, something is not tight enough. It's also a pretty good check for MFL's and beer nuts.

Since the beer was gone, that pretty much rules out a cover seal on the corny. O-rings on the liquid out port are certainly a possibility, not so much the rings on the gas in port.

Since you ran 4 gallons dry in under 3 days at 10 psi, that's a pretty good leak. I'd start by filling the keg with water and running it up to 30 psi. You should at least see a drip if not a spray of water.

I'm betting on the hyper dimensional washers...

Bob

Oooh! I wanna play, too!

Was a cobra tap involved?
And/or, is this a pin lock keg?

Cheers!

Did you bleed the keg before you turned the pressure on the regulator back down to 10psi? (thinking about the regulator backflow part of your question)

It is a ball lock keg. I did have the liquid out connected. When I found it the tubing had come off the the barb connector. All other connections were anally checked before kegging. It was a picnic tap and I did bleed it before i adjusted the psi from 30 to 10.

So your keg just drained out the loose beer line then? Dude, so sorry. At least it sounds like your regulator should be fine. Lifting a pint to your wasted keg.

thanks for the sympathy. so in the future, i should be ok leaving it at 10 psi as long as the liquid out adapter is not hooked in, unless i'm drinking the beer.

pineknot said:

thanks for the sympathy. so in the future, i should be ok leaving it at 10 psi as long as the liquid out adapter is not hooked in, unless i'm drinking the beer.

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You can leave the beer line connected, as long as you have hose clamps and the tap is closed!

I always leave my kegs hooked up, all the time. It'd be a pain hooking and unhooking each time someone wanted to pour a glass of beer.

This just happened to me as well, but in my case nothing disconnected. It just leaked, I think from the picnic tap. Next time I'll just leave the liquid out disconnected. I'm also going to check all contact points for leaks with soapy water or sanitizer. The biggest PITA is now I have to fill the CO2 tank again, which involves staying home from work, or at least working from home. Oh, and yes I need to brew another batch. It'll be 100 in the shade tomorrow, I don't think that's conducive to brewing.

Sounds like it's time to trash the picnic taps and get a real beer faucet (cheaper than dumping batches of beer and wasting tanks of CO2!). I'm with Yoop, I wouldn't want to be connecting and disconnecting every time I wanted a beer.

100+ is not conducive to brewing but it is conducive to drinking a very, very cold beer. Luckily I still have some raspberry wheat I previously brewed for my wife left over. Zacster, although I feel your pain, it comforts me to know that I'm not alone. Thanks to all!

pineknot said:

thanks for the sympathy. so in the future, i should be ok leaving it at 10 psi as long as the liquid out adapter is not hooked in, unless i'm drinking the beer.

Click to expand...

Hi

Hose clamp basics:

Get the ones that smash on and a crimper tool to go with them. The tool should be about $9 and the Oetiker clamps run around 10 to 25 cents each in reasonable quantities.

You want a clamp size that slides easily over the tube + barb, but just barely does it. That means you likely will wind up with about four sizes of clamp for all the combinations of beer line / gas line and various barb sizes.

The clamp goes on tight. You should be able to twist and tug the tube and it doesn't budge. A really good check is to try and twist each line just before you are done. Any that twist either have a loose clamp / missing MFL washer / or a nut somewhere isn't tight.

After you have done all that, do it one more time on a new setup. I'm always amazed at what i find ....

Bob

pineknot said:

It is a ball lock keg. I did have the liquid out connected. When I found it the tubing had come off the the barb connector. All other connections were anally checked before kegging. It was a picnic tap and I did bleed it before i adjusted the psi from 30 to 10.

Click to expand...

Maybe next time, use your eyes and hands to do the checking. Just a suggestion.

If you are gonna trash the picnic taps hook a fellow brewer up... This guy

Ma23456 said:

If you are gonna trash the picnic taps hook a fellow brewer up... This guy

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Are we talking about these? Costs almost as much to mail it as it's worth.