recooled keg will not dispense correctly.

I am confused. My keg was working fine until I let it warm up and rechilled it.

Details:
I had my first kegged beer dispensing fine (an Anchor Steam clone): 40F, 10' of 3/16", picnic tap
12psi. Everything but the bottle inside the fridge. Pulling a pint or two each day for about 2wks. A little slow because of the (probably excessive) length but good carb and righteous head. Life is good.

Logistics intervened, and I needed the fridge for temp control for a week. So I disconnected the keg and let it sit at room temp while I used the fridge. After a week I had space for the keg again. Put the keg back in at 40F and let it chill a few days before hooking up the gas again. Waited about a week and pulled another pint: massive bubbles in the beer line and 90% foam. No off-flavors, though.

My reading on HBT suggested that the beer might be overcarbed now in relation to the dispensing pressure. So I vented 1/x for a few days and put it back on the gas. Same freaking thing.

WTF? WTF? WTF? I don't get it.

I would think if you took a carbed keg out of the fridge and did nothing but let it warm then rechill it to the original temp and waited long enough there would be no significant change, unless you had some residual sugars left over or picked up an infection.

What am I missing here?

It shouldn't have changed carbonation while out of the fridge. Have you pulled a second pint? The first one could have been from air getting trapped in the lines.

My money's on a dried up sugar clog somewhere. Any restriction will make the pressure go up.

I'd take the QDs and posts apart, soak in hot water, rinse and sanitize before assembling.

I've pulled about 10 off it in the two weeks since it started doing it. Same thing.

I'll yank the QDs and will report back.

I had a keg that got warmed back up 1/2 full for 2 days. It never recarbed properly afterwards. But at mine was flatter than it should have been, so foaming wasn't an issue.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but....

What's the process if you aren't chilling a keg right away? Say your kegorator is full (purely hypothetical question :cross: ), and you have beer waiting to be kegged. Do you carbonate the beer and then reduce the pressure? Or do you just leave it till you have room to chill it?

I want to start kegging my beer, but questions like this will dictate the size of my kegorator (or krezzer).

Thanks

SmilinJoe said:

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but....

What's the process if you aren't chilling a keg right away? Say your kegorator is full (purely hypothetical question :cross: ), and you have beer waiting to be kegged. Do you carbonate the beer and then reduce the pressure? Or do you just leave it till you have room to chill it?

I want to start kegging my beer, but questions like this will dictate the size of my kegorator (or krezzer).

Thanks

Click to expand...

In that glorious situation (sure is nice to have a full pipeline), I do the following:
- Fill the keg with CO2
- Rack into the keg
- Hit it with the gas again (at a high PSI to ensure the lid seals) and purge a couple of times
- Store in a cool area until a spot opens up in the fridge, at which point I carb