Picnic Taps

I recently acquired three corny kegs and picked up the required lines, regulator and gas last weekend so I could ket an IPA I'd had settling onto draft ASAP

It's great - Im never going to have to bottle again unless I want to !

Anyhoo - the only tap I could get was a little picnic tap that came with a short length of 10mm hose. The problem is that the beer comes out of the tap way too foamy. Pressure is around 15psi and the temperature is about 7C.

Is it that the pressure is too high ( I think not), the beer is too warm (feels just right to me) or is it that the picnic taps are just a bit crappy (my money is on this one).

If its the tap, would splicing an extra few feet of 8mm i.d beer line onto the out post help any ?

Slainte !

80/-

From what I've read on this forum.........

It sound like the line is to wide in diameter. people keep mentioning a 3/16" line which is 4.7 mm inside diameter.........

There is something to so with line and flow resistance..........Anyway, give that a try and change the line from the keg to the tap.......Can't hurt!

I'm sure someone else will correct me, if i'm wrong, and that would help me as well, as I am kegging my next batch in about 2 weeks, adn I already purchased the 3/16 inch line.


IGOR

Sounds like the system is not balanced. Look here for a complete discussion of this.

Cheers guys - that gives me something to work with.

Does anyone happen to know the id of 3/8" od beer line?

The table on the site vtfan99 linked to gives resistance ratings for inner diameter and I haven't a clue what that might be for my line.

To balance out a tap just above the keg at 15psi I work out that I need 130 feet of 3/8 id pipe - that just isn't going to happen !


80/-

I don't think you've done the math quite right on that 150 foot calculation there. I use picnic taps on my kegs when they get taken to a party. I just tone down the CO2 for dispensing.

I.e. if you condition the keg at 15 PSI, drop it down to 8 or so for serving. Problem is that if you leave it as that PSI for a long period of time, apparently the CO2 will come out of solution and the beer will become flat. I haven't noticed that problem, though.

Don't bother to try and balance a system with picnic taps. Just turn the pressure down. Bleed all the pressure off your keg, turn your regulator all the way down, then slowly crank up the pressure while dispensing. When you get a good, non foamy, flow out of the nozzle, you know you are at the right pressure. Note this pressure for future reference. Right after you pour your last glass for the evening, turn the pressure back up to conditioning pressure.

Use the following chart to gage your "volumes of CO2" in your beer. This is the carbonation level of your beer as measured by grams of CO2 per liter of beer.

http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/Carbonation%20Chart.xls

Prosit!

tnlandsailor said:

Don't bother to try and balance a system with picnic taps. Just turn the pressure down.

Click to expand...

If you don't know the inner diameter of your hose for use in the balancing formula, then I agree here...just turn the pressure down and play with it. However, I have picnic taps on my kegs at home and I redid my lines because they weren't balanced originally. Using the formula I calculated the length of 3/16 ID line that I needed. Now every poor is even with just the right amount of head.

Cheers again guys - so for tonight I'll try the turn the pressure down route and I'll get online and get some small bore beer line for future use.



80/-

tnlandsailor said:

Don't bother to try and balance a system with picnic taps. Just turn the pressure down.

Click to expand...

Funny, my picnic taps work no different than any other tap I've got (mixture of N. American, European and British). There's no technical reason why they can't be balanced like any other type.

Mikey said:

Funny, my picnic taps work no different than any other tap I've got (mixture of N. American, European and British). There's no technical reason why they can't be balanced like any other type.

Click to expand...

I agree that they can be balanced, but usually the picnic taps are shorter than they would need to be in order to properly balance the system at the CO2 level for a 15 or so PSI beer.