help needed

Last night I had some friends over and we had a "taste test". We blinded several commercial brews (Pyramid, Sierra Nev, Fat Tire, Anchor Steam, etc, etc, etc) against some of the various homebrews I have made in the last year.

Of course when my brew was compared against the commercial stuff you could spot mine every time. Not that the flavor of my stuff was off but there was a noticeable difference in the texture. My brew seemed hard and less fizzy compared to the almost floaty, light and airy texture of the commercial brews. It seems to me that this is an indication that my stuff must be way under carbed. I'm sort of between a rock an a hard place here if that is the case.

I've favored the "set and forget" method for kegs but the results have been spotty (I leave the keg at 30 psi for just over a day and a half and let it condition for 2-3 weeks). To get the carb level up I have tried leaving it on for a few days to get more bubbles in the beer solution but I end up with a ton of head on the draw. OTOH to keep the head down I have to remove the c02 early and consequently have less bubbles in the beer solution. I still have not carbed the perfect keg yet but I never cared until last night because it was still drinkable.

(FWIW I have not tried the priming sugar yet for kegging but if it helps I might start going that route instead.)

Also, to throw a wrench in the works I like to "draw off" about 6-8 bottles worth from each batch and bottle it (as I am kegging). I've had a real hit and miss approach trying to get the priming solution accurate to prime such a small batch. No bottle bombs yet but very few have had high carb levels. Maybe I should switch to sugar pills for those smaller batches instead of trying to get the sugar water solution right for bottles?


I don't want to reinvent the wheel here. If anyone has some helpful input I'd appreciate it.

Do you use this method to force carb your beers?
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/keg-force-carbing-methods-illustrated-73328/

Do you use this chart to carb your beer vs the recomended volumes?
Force Carbonation & Carb Table

It sounds to me like you need some more resistance in your beer lines. This will allow you to carb up your beer without giving you a glass of foam when you go to pour it. I would suggest using about 8' of this Beverage Line (3/16' ID) - By the Foot | MoreBeer and your foaming problems will be solved.

As far as carbing the keg I usually set the psi to around 30 then shake the crap out of it for about 5 minutes, this will allow more CO2 to go into solution and it will drastically reduce the time it takes to carb a beer.

as for the bottles try 3/4 of a teaspoon per bottle.

How long are your lines? Are you using Cobra taps ? I had terrible foaming when I first tried tapping, on advise from here I took out the 5ft 3/16 and went with 10 ft no more foam. Except on the keg I left at 30 psi for 2 weeks took a while to bleed it off but its fine now.

jaxxzero3 said:

Do you use this method to force carb your beers?
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/keg-force-carbing-methods-illustrated-73328/

Do you use this chart to carb your beer vs the recomended volumes?
Force Carbonation & Carb Table

Click to expand...

I tried using that chart the first few times but it seemed pretty arbitrary (because there was no timeline suggested at a given PSI) so I sorta just went with what "worked" in keeping the head down at the expense of the carbonation.

I have had people ask me before about my beer line length and I get conflicting reports when I give them the answer. I even brought my draft tower into my LHBS and asked if they could help me put longer hoses onto it. The owner explained it would be impossible to remove the taps from the inside of the dual tap tower so I would have to live with the short length of hose I have on it (roughly 2'). He said the shorter length would be fine and if the beer was too heady it was "something I was doing wrong". He never really qualified what it was I was doing to get such a heady brew. (He was also pretty adamant about not listening to the groups since the "noise floor" was so high. Cute theory but not very helpful either...)

Overall I think I'm starting to get the hang of force carbing but I know I can get the brew more active. Especially after noticing such a difference between my brew and commercial. I'm just not sure how. There has to be a way to make sense out of all this when there's so much variable info out there.

Arbitrary is right - but there is some math behind it.
3/16 line needs to be 5 feet at 10 lbs of pressure, or something like that. I think anything shorter than 5 feet will give you problems, so make it somewhere between 5 and 10 feet - but not 2.
I use set-it-and-forget it - but I leave it at 10lbs and forget it. I don't move it back and forth...Takes 2 weeks for me to be happy with the carbonation, 3 is better.
(4 weeks, I'd better be brewing again!)

Hang Glider said:

Arbitrary is right - but there is some math behind it.
3/16 line needs to be 5 feet at 10 lbs of pressure, or something like that. I think anything shorter than 5 feet will give you problems, so make it somewhere between 5 and 10 feet - but not 2.
I use set-it-and-forget it - but I leave it at 10lbs and forget it. I don't move it back and forth...Takes 2 weeks for me to be happy with the carbonation, 3 is better.
(4 weeks, I'd better be brewing again!)

Click to expand...

Let me ask you about this then. The LBHS guy told me something like I'd have better luck strapping on wings and flying to Mars than removing the taps from my tower. It did look really difficult to get ANY tool in there to pull those nuts off. He just told me to "live with it". Quite annoying actually. Since the owner I bought the tower from clipped these things so danged short I'm sort of stuck with the 2' length unless someone has advice on how to extend it.

I did purchase some quick disconnects from CHI and if there's some hardware that I can create extensions with I'd gladly do it. I'm just at a loss on how to make it work.