I almost cried . . .

This morning, I opened the garage door to leave for work, and I was overwhelmed with the smell of cascade hops. At first, I thought that my obsession with homebrew was actually resulting in sense-hallucination - as in, I was imagining such a pleasant aroma.

When I turned on the garage light, however, I realized that the keg of IPA that I set to force carb last night must have a leaky gasket. There was IPA all over the floor of my garage .

The funniest part about it (if anything about it is funny) is that my mouth was literally salivating to have a beer this morning at 6:00 am :cross: .

Don't worry, I resisted the impulse. Now, I am sitting here at work dreading the idea of cleaning the sticky beer residue out of my garage this afternoon.

Aigh, that sucks. Can you just hose it down?

SimpleGreen, hose, and pushbroom. Cleaned my boilovers until I got better at brewpot wrangling!. Your garage slab, if it is a slab, should be pitched to drain out, so just spray in the direction of the opening, and you should be good.

Anything salvageable?

Yeah. There is a few gallons of IPA left. I am more worried about how to fix my keg. I think that it was leaking from the out post. I have re-conditioned the keg - gaskets are all new, etc. So, I hope I don't need a new post.

sonvolt said:

Yeah. There is a few gallons of IPA left. I am more worried about how to fix my keg. I think that it was leaking from the out post. I have re-conditioned the keg - gaskets are all new, etc. So, I hope I don't need a new post.

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I had a keg that was leaking from one of the posts (I think the gas in.) I had replaced everything also, so I was a little confused.

Luckily, I quickly discovered that the poppit was not seated snugly into the hole on the top of the post. The solution, I simply pushed the poppit down with my thumbnail and guided it back up properly. I haven't had a problem with it since.

Ugh....sorry man.

I've had that happen too. In the kitchen.

Most of time, problems with the poppet valve can be solved by reseating it, as suggested above. Sometimes, you have to remove the plug from the keg, take the poppet out and clean it. I haven't replaced a poppet, yet. I do have a spare on-hand, just in case.

Just lost part of a keg of cider (and messed up my new locker), because of a leaky poppet.

Orpheus said:

I had a keg that was leaking from one of the posts (I think the gas in.) I had replaced everything also, so I was a little confused.

Luckily, I quickly discovered that the poppit was not seated snugly into the hole on the top of the post. The solution, I simply pushed the poppit down with my thumbnail and guided it back up properly. I haven't had a problem with it since.

Click to expand...

I actually think that this is the problem. I looked at it quickly this morning, and it seemed a bit offset.

if it is offset, i would replace the poppet, not just try to reseat it. if it isn't seating correctly by itself, it's usually the gasket on the poppet, and most likely it will not seat correctly in the future as well. poppets are cheap, your beer is precious. i keep many many poppets on hand now because i have so many different types of kegs now.