Bubbles in Beer Line

chexjc said:

So with everyone's advice, I felt pretty confident about setting up my kegerator. Thanks for that! I'm set up for one corny and one sanke, but the homebrew is still in the primary. I picked up a quarter-keg (holy hell that is a lot of beer) of Bell's Oberon yesterday and I'm having some foaming issues.

I let the keg sit for a few hours in the fridge (43F) before tapping. The first 3 pours were mostly foam and then it was pretty good, but every time I let the keg rest for a bit, that first pour was like 60/40 beer:foam. I took a look at the lines and I see I'm getting some bubbles. From my research I've been led to believe that this is likely cause by the lower serving pressue I was using of 9psi and the imbalance with the volume of CO2 in the beer (which I think is around 2.4). So if I'm correct in understanding, I need to set my psi to ~13 @ 43F for a couple days to let things balance a bit, right? My lines are 10', btw. It's a nice slow pour.

Also, I'm hungover on a wednesday morning. I realize now that drinking all the beer while working out the kinks in the system was a dumb idea Also, Bells Oberon is incredible on draft! I didn't know what I was missing!

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Rockn_M said:

If you pour a pint or two with a lot of foam then quickly pour a third pint it it pours well this is because the tap shanks warm up releasing the co2. By the 3rd pour the shanks are cold and pour like they should. You'll need to tug up s fan to blow the cold fridge air up the shaft to keep thinks cool.

I did this and had good pours afterwards.

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chexjc said:

Thanks guys. Yeah, I assumed it was some combination of those two issues. I left the psi at 12-13 before I left for work this morning...we'll see how it does when I get home.

I'd like to leave it be while I'm away on vacation through Monday, but I also want to disconnect the keg while I'm gone to a)prevent my girlfriend's cousin who's watching our cats from drinking it and b)prevent the cats from opening the tap while I'm gone. While I be alright to just disconnect the coupler?

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Buckeye_Phil said:

I bought keg locks specifically for that reason. Our cats like to lay on top, and I dreaded the day I came home to 5gal of beer on the floor and an empty CO2 cylinder.

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Rockn_M said:

You'll be fine unhooking them.

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djonesax said:

I keep a Yuengling on tap for my wife and this happens to me every-time I tap a new keg. First off the store usually has the cooler at 45 degrees or so which is not cold enough for this beer. Second, the keg is almost always over pressurized maybe because of the warmer temperature releasing C02 from solution. Third, transporting it shakes it up and it needs time to settle.

I have spent lot of frustrating time and wasted beer on this trying to determine why it was so foamy but I now have a process that works.

1. Get the keg a day or many hours before I actually want to serve it so it has time to settle and cool down to my serving temps.
2. I bleed off all the initial pressure from the keg and it regulate to about 10PSI sitting at 35 degrees.
3. I added a collar to the keezer to keep my taps and lines cold but if the outside of the tap is not cold I still get half a glass of foam on the first pour. For that reason, on my first pour I will pour half a glass of foam, dump it, and then its good.
4. Some times if I am pouring multiple glasses, I'll pour the first half full, set it aside and pour the others then finish that one last.
5. Keep the taps clean by taking them apart and making sure there is no gunk in them.

Also, 10' seems very long, what size line are you using? 3/16" ID beer line drops around 2PSI per foot so to have a balanced system you'd need to pressurize at around 20PSI, which seems like it would over carb your beer. I run about 5-6 feet of line and my serving PSI is between 10-12 depending on the beer. If you have 10' of line and 13psi, and its trickling out, that will cause foam too.

David

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PapaO said:

Yuengling is kegged at 2.6 volumes. So take the temp of your second pint and use this chart to set your psi.
http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php
If your at 43 than the psi is 15. 10 foot of 3/16" beer line should be good.

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Subdivisions said:

It's around 1 psi per foot. That's where your problem is. Your line length would be best pouring at 6 psi which will eventually let the beer go flat. I have 10' and at 13 psi it is definitely not a trickle. A nicely poured pint should take around 10 seconds.

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day_trippr said:

LOL! Brewsmith just copied the same old-school conventional wisdom, there's zero original thought in it.
And, like the rest, it makes a fundamental error with the line resistance per foot metric, which throws the whole effort right in the toilet.

Fortunately, there is the only beer line length calculator worth using to not only properly balance your system using Science! but give you an education at the same time.

It's A Good Thing.

Cheers!

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