Hey all, need a little help here. I built up a kegerator system a few weeks ago, and I hadn't heard about how to "balance" the system. Anyway, I bought 15ft of beer line, and just split it between the three taps - So I have about 5 feet of beer line for each faucet.
I hooked up 2 kegs that I had previously conditioned, and tried it out. the beer was pretty much as carbonated as I expected, but I didn't think I was getting enough (or any) head on the pour. Intuitively, I figured that If I increased the CO2 pressure (was at 9, increased to about 12), I would get slightly faster pours with a little more head. It worked to an extent, so I bumped it up to about 17 and the pours were right where I wanted them.
I knew that by doing this, I'd be forcing more carbonation into the beer, so I did some checking online - that's when I found out about balanced systems. I read that as long as the CO2 pressure was set somewhere between 6 and 19 or so you should be ok - so I left it alone.
All is well. A couple weeks later I started getting a little too much head on the pours - I assume that the beer now had a little too much carbonation, partially from force and partially from the remaining conditioning. So I set the pressure back down to about 9. When my friend poured a beer the next day, he got nothing but foam. I'm guessing that by decreasing the pressure, I let CO2 out of solution (like opening a pop bottle). But now I don't know how to fix it. I don't know whether to up the pressure back to 17, and let it down slowly, like 1 psi per day - or weather I should vent the keg for a few minutes, or what? Any help is appreciated.
I hooked up 2 kegs that I had previously conditioned, and tried it out. the beer was pretty much as carbonated as I expected, but I didn't think I was getting enough (or any) head on the pour. Intuitively, I figured that If I increased the CO2 pressure (was at 9, increased to about 12), I would get slightly faster pours with a little more head. It worked to an extent, so I bumped it up to about 17 and the pours were right where I wanted them.
I knew that by doing this, I'd be forcing more carbonation into the beer, so I did some checking online - that's when I found out about balanced systems. I read that as long as the CO2 pressure was set somewhere between 6 and 19 or so you should be ok - so I left it alone.
All is well. A couple weeks later I started getting a little too much head on the pours - I assume that the beer now had a little too much carbonation, partially from force and partially from the remaining conditioning. So I set the pressure back down to about 9. When my friend poured a beer the next day, he got nothing but foam. I'm guessing that by decreasing the pressure, I let CO2 out of solution (like opening a pop bottle). But now I don't know how to fix it. I don't know whether to up the pressure back to 17, and let it down slowly, like 1 psi per day - or weather I should vent the keg for a few minutes, or what? Any help is appreciated.