Keg Of Bass

Somebody gave me a keg of Bass Ale for Christmas. It's a 1/2 barrell commercial keg that requires a Grundy style "G" Sankey coupler. It's a cool gift, and I plan to make use of the keg as a keggle when it's empty.

Rather than purchase a (probably) one-time-use Sankey "G" coupler, I rented one from a local liquor store. My plan was to use the coupler to transfer the Bass to my ball-lock cornies, for which I have a kegerator ready to go. This allows me the flexibility to have a second beer (homebrew) on tap on the two-tap kegerator, since the kegerator will hold only two cornies or a single 1/2 barrell keg at a time. Also, this approach allows me to not have to keep the rental coupler too long.

So I cleaned and sanitized the coupler and cobra tap that it came with and hooked it up to my CO2 bottle, which I have not accessed yet. So far I have just tapped it using the existing pressure in the keg.

What I am getting is all foam. The cobra tap on the coupler is only about 16 inches long but I have a full length racking cane stuck in it, which I place at the bottom of a cornie after flushing it with CO2. Due to the excessive foam, at this rate it's gonna take me 10 cornies.

It does not appear as if there is any way to blow off pressure from this keg, other than to just let it foam when tapping it.

Does anyone have any recommendations for how to avoid this foaming issue?

Thanks,

Chris

My thoughts are as follows, make sure the keg of Bass is cold, very cold, this will help keep the gas in solution, second use the lowest pressure you can to push the beer into the corny kegs and the bring the cornys up to serving pressure afterwords. Good luck, thats a good gift. Paul

It it works like our cornies you need a lot more length on your hose to keep the foam to a minimum...damn that sounds dirty...

why fill your cornies by pouring beer into them, when you can counter-pressure fill them??

Stick a hose between the keg coupler and a liquid disconnect, seal up the corny, pressurize the corny, then hook the gas up to the other keg, connect the two kegs together and push the beer into the corny. Then you should be able to depress the gas poppet by hand to slowly release pressure in the corny, allowing beer to flow into it. Once you start getting some liquid out of the gas post, you know it's full.

Anyone see any problems with this?

I do the same thing, but I seal up the corny and put the gas disconnect on with a short length of hose attached. The liquid disconnect is attached to the out hose of the sanky. I push into the corny with 10 psi until I get foam from the out disconnect. Pull the out disconnect off and let the corny pressurize. Works very well.

I'd take the cobra tap off of the coupler and put 5' of line & a liquid connector on. Some good ideas listed for filling. You can pull the pressure relief occasionally to help speed the process. Once the filling is done, put the cobra back on the coupler.

By the way, Keeping that keg for your personal use is not legal.
Just so you know.

RichBrewer said:

By the way, Keeping that keg for your personal use is not legal.
Just so you know.

Click to expand...

More importantly, make sure your friend isn't expecting to get his deposit back. Personally, I'd be more concerned about screwing over a friend than the other issues of morality involved. Rich is right, though...you're actually stealing the keg unless you buy it from the brewery - which you can't do through any distributor I know.

Now, let's let this be the last post in this thread about keg morality. There are plenty of other threads where you can view that sort of discussion.

An update --

After flushing the cornies with CO2, I hooked up the Bass coupler beer line to the corny beer line and the cornie gas connector to a blow-off line. I supplied dispensing pressure to the Bass keg and after all the foam I have two full cornies, which I can now control the carbonation and dispensing pressure for.

The keg was an orphan keg before it was given to me. I have not decided what to do with it now.

Thanks for the suggestions...

Chris