Please help me setup my kegerator!

Okay, so i've spent/wasted my first 5 gallon batch of beer due to issues with my system. I am pretty damn frustrated as i never got to taste it carbonated. So first issue was my pin lock keg leaked, it had dents on the upper lip where the lid connects to. So then i moved onto ball lock kegs (two weeks after the brew day now), and so i try to transfer the beer from the pin lock keg to the ball lock keg via auto-siphon and all of a sudden the beer foams up and i lose 1.5-2 gallons!! So I pound some Guinness to try to deal with what just happened. Next, I get my ball lock keg cold and attach the CO2 line to the gas side to force carb. at 40 PSI. Next thing i know the hose goes flying off, the gas connector (for some reason is a really tight fit on the beer post) stays on the beer post and just squirts beer all over the garage. I quickly press my thumb against the outlet and tried to yank it off but i ended up soaking myself in beer. So here i sit soaked in flat cold beer wondering if i have the worst of luck.

So the issue i have right now is the CO2 tank line. My regulator is a Harris brand regulator and the outlet is quite large. I have a 5/larger size vinyl tubing connected to it and have it strapped onto the CO2 connector with a lot of thread tape to make a tight fit. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Drew

OK, first: slow down.

I think the 40 psi idea was the problem.

I'm not a big fan of the whole 'force carb' thing. You can carb a keg of beer that way (theoretically) in a few hours but it's still a lot of work and very unreliable as a means of getting your target PSI.

Carbing in the keg is a piece of cake if you just hook everything up, pressure check it first (without beer, maybe star-san in your keg or something). Spray soapy water on all connections and make sure you have no leaks and then set it to the desired carbing/serving pressure and switch to your beer keg. I have a spare keg with star san in it to use for flushing the lines periodically. It's also good for testing new connections so you don't waste any of the precious fluid . I like 12 psi but I also like a nice head on my ales. There are charts online that can show you the generally accepted pressure (and temp) for most kinds of brews.

Usually it takes about a week for me to fully chill and carb a keg, sometimes a little longer. The temp is key (looks like you knew that). 12 psi won't push your connections very much and you shouldn't end up with any problems just using regular hose clamps on all connections.

Good luck and hang in there. Once you get your system dialed in, you'll have a brew pub right there in your home.


Nothing better than having your kegerator set to the perfect temp and drawing off a pint or two after a hard day at work.

Yea, don't get discouraged. Your first time is all about learning. Take it slow.

If you are a little more impatient than the set and forget you can tone it down a bit and still carbonate quicker. What I do is hook my CO2 line up like normal to the IN post (I never mess with the OUT post unless I'm attaching my liquid line). Set your regulator to 25-30 and let it sit for between 36 and 48 hours (in your kegerator) depending on how high you want your carb to be. I've found that 36 hours at 30psi will give you somewhere in the range of 8-12 psi, while 48 will give you somewhere closer to 12 psi. After that, just purge your keg of all the headspace, set your regulator to your desired serving pressure and connect. It'll all fall into equilibrium within the next day if its not exactly even.

Carbed beer in 2 days with no fuss.

You should never trust a barbed fitting alone to hold onto any hose when kegging pressure is involved. Always add a clamp - for both gas and beer lines. Compared to the cost of venting a keg of brew, clamps are cheap insurance...

day_trippr said:

You should never trust a barbed fitting alone to hold onto any hose when kegging pressure is involved. Always add a clamp - for both gas and beer lines. Compared to the cost of venting a keg of brew, clamps are cheap insurance...

Click to expand...

I had a clamp on there, it also flew off from 40PSI. Problem is, the diameter of the tubing is so small, the clamp is not as efficient. Another problem i had was when i had the CO2 tank inside the refrigerator, the vinyl tubes hardened up and it seemed like the CO2 froze. This doesn't seem likely considering CO2 freezes ~-70oF but the reading on the regulator was 0. I took the tank out of the mini fridge and let it warm back up to room temp. I turned up the regulator and the reading was fine. So today i am going to route the tubing out of the fridge so i can keep the CO2 tank outside.

Ignore that gauge, its pretty much useless. The pressure on the tank will drop significantly when put into refrigeration but never to the point where you wont be able to push your beer at the desired temperature.

Update: So i got everything going two nights ago and it dispensed beer fine that night. I set the regulator (now outside) to 12PSI and the next day it was at 0, however the main regulator was still showing CO2 so it didn't leak. I then turned it back up to 12PSI and 12 hours later it went down to 6PSI. Why is the CO2 level decreasing so much and why am i constantly having to turn up the regulator t maintain it at 12PSI?

Here's a picture of the current setup: