Force Carb and Serving pressure question.

I am force carbing my kegs at 40 degrees and about 12-18 PSIs (depending on the style). My kegerator seems to pour best at about 8-9 PSIs.

Is it ok to force carb for a week, and then dial down to the serving pressure, or am i going to run into some foam/pouring problems?

Whats actuallyhappeneing to my carb'ed keg. Isnt it slowly de-corbonating at the lower pressure?

cpbergie said:

I am force carbing my kegs at 40 degrees and about 12-18 PSIs (depending on the style). My kegerator seems to pour best at about 8-9 PSIs.

Is it ok to force carb for a week, and then dial down to the serving pressure, or am i going to run into some foam/pouring problems?

Click to expand...

Yes, it's fine. You'll want to bleed the higher pressure before you start pouring.

Whats actuallyhappeneing to my carb'ed keg. Isnt it slowly de-corbonating at the lower pressure?

Click to expand...

Exactly.

Whats actually happeneing to my carb'ed keg. Isnt it slowly de-corbonating at the lower pressure?

-'Exactly'

Click to expand...

Does this still happen if there's a check-valve installed on the gas line?

I carb & dispense at 12 PSI. Works for me just fine.

The trick with force carbonation is that you want your beer to come out of the end of the dispensing tube @ 0 psi. Sounds odd right? What this means is that you need the pressure drop in the dispensing tube to equal the pressure that your regulator is set at. 3/16" I.D. tubing has a pressure drop of 2.2-3 PSI per foot. This means that to deliver beer at 12 psi (the pressure that I carbonate and dispense at), you need four to 6 feet of tubing. If you use 1/4" tubing which has a much lower pressure drop due to its larger size, you may need much more tubing. I've found that I use a little more to get the desired results (8-10' 3/16" ID), so you may need to experiment with length a little. Check this article, it is very comprehensive and does a much better job of explaining than I can:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/docs/pdf/corny-keg.pdf

It's vino tonight, but work comes early.

What sea said. Add more line length and make sure it's 3/16" ID.

kvh said:

Does this still happen if there's a check-valve installed on the gas line?

Click to expand...

Yes. If you're beer is force carbed at 18 psi, as soon as you drop the serving pressure to 12 psi, the CO2 in the beer will start to come out of solution to equalize the pressure. I'm not sure how long it takes, but eventually your beer will be carbed at whatever serving pressure you're using.

As others have said, if you want a higher level of carbonation (and thus a higher serving pressure), you need a longer beer line. This site can help you calculate what you'll need.

Thanks, i used those calculations, and it turns out i need more line. im not able to tackle that yet, so this is my temporary solution.

But this brings up and interesting point, because one of my kegs will be from a brewery, what are the odds that my kegerator is setup to the same pressure that they cabonated at? probably not very high. How do bars handle this?