Foam, foam, foam - any ideas?

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FlyGuy

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I kegged up my first two cornies this weekend, force carbonated, and tonight I went to sample. Keg #1 was 5 gallons of an oatmeal stout (that tastes more like a porter, oh well) and it is carbonated perfectly. Keg #2 was an English bitter, but only 3 gallons. It is pouring nothing but foam and CO2 out of my picnic tap. It isn't frozen, and all the seals on the keg are new, and poppets seem fine. Any ideas?

Here is my system:
- plenty of CO2
- force carbed at about 25 psi @ 45F; agitated to mix for a few minutes, then disconnected gas
- repeated step above again after 8 hours
- dropped pressure in kegs to serving pressure (about 11 psi)
- let sit for 2 days
- pouring from a picnic tap on 4 feet of 3/16" hose (at keg height)

Note, I tried the same hose/picnic tap on both kegs, and keg #1 pours perfectly, but keg #2 is foam, foam, foam. $#@(*&$(&(#@!!!

EDIT: dropped the pressure to almost nothing, still all foam

I have looked through past threads, but couldn't find much to help. If anyone has any advice on things to try, I would sure appreciate it!
 
abracadabra said:
Drop the pressure some more on the foamy keg

Yes, tried that right away. Makes no difference. Even at about 1 psi, I can't even pour/siphon without getting foam.

I even pulled out the dip tube to see if it was cracked or anythng, but it seemed fine. The seal seemed fine, too.
 
You have to drop the pressure and then let the keg sit at the lower pressure for a few days, releasing it occasionally. This lets the Co2 come out of the beer. Just takes a while. You could bleed the keg, shake it, bleed it, repeat a few times. It is hard to control the amount this way. In my short kegging carreer I've come to realize the longer way yields the best results.
 
Thanks CH. So is it that I over-carbonated? If so, it must have had something to do with the fact that the keg was only half full. Now that I think about it, I guess all that headspace has a LOT of CO2 at 25 psi. Much more than my other keg that was full, anyways. Makes sense -- thanks.
 
Rule of thumb #1: start LOW work HIGH. You can easily add pressure but once you are overcarbed it takes a long time to get things balanced out.
 
This is the problem with rushing carbonation. 25 lbs is a LOT of CO2. I have mine set mine at 10-15 pounds and leave it there.
 
I too only carb at 10-12 psi. I figure we have to wait during the entire beer making process anyway, so a little waiting for the beer to carb isn't hard.


My suspicion is that the half-full keg was overcarbed, but let us know if that was indeed the problem in case someone else runs into this.
 
I bet he has the inlet and outlet dip tubes switched and he is drawing foam off the top of the liquid in the keg.

Be very careful if you remove the studs to switch them. You have to pressure down first and then don't bump the beer ! I once had a beer fountain spray my basement ceiling full of beer !
 
That sounds like a reasonable explaination. Remember, think of the top of the keg as a face and the posts are eyes. "Beer Goggles" or "BG" meaning the left one is beer and the right one is gas. I'll get it to stick, I'm tellin ya.
 
Bobby-- that makes no sense. Which post it is depends on which side of the keg you are standing on. It has no 'left side' or 'right side'.

/edit Here's an exercise: use Bobby's BG method to determine which is the gas side of this keg:

pepsi_keg_top.jpg
 
No, I definitely had the correct post -- that's an easy mistake to make, I suppose, so I was aware of that one. And as I mentioned above, I actually pulled out the dip tube from the out post to make sure there was nothing wrong with it.

Based on the advice of ChillHaze, I dropped my pressure and let it sit over night. This morning it was pouring, finally, and the carbonation was pretty much bang on. Sheer luck, I know.

Anyways, yes, I knew to wait and let it carb up properly over time, but I was impatient given that it was my first two kegs of beer! However, I did follow the quick-carb 'recipe' posted by someone on this site (was it BierMuncher??) and it worked PERFECTLY for keg #1. The trick was that I didn't think about the effect of the extra headspace on keg #2. Lesson learned.

Anyways, thanks to you all for helping out. It helped me nail down the problem right away, and now I can enjoy my first kegged HB tonight!!!

Cheers!!

:mug:
 
Bobby_M said:
That sounds like a reasonable explaination. Remember, think of the top of the keg as a face and the posts are eyes. "Beer Goggles" or "BG" meaning the left one is beer and the right one is gas. I'll get it to stick, I'm tellin ya.

Sounds great, but how do you determine if the face is upside down or not depending on which way you put the lid back on?

I use Blue Masking tape for labling every thing. I have put a piece of blue tape on the beer side of every keg of mine. Beer - Blue. :D
 
kornkob said:
Bobby-- that makes no sense. Which post it is depends on which side of the keg you are standing on. It has no 'left side' or 'right side'.

/edit Here's an exercise: use Bobby's BG method to determine which is the gas side of this keg:

pepsi_keg_top.jpg

Oops, I only have pinlock kegs which are clearly face shaped. I didn't know that ball locks have the posts directly in line with the lid. The pinlock posts are way offset. Sorry.

It's hard to see in this pic, but here's what I mean:

fillingkeg.jpg


Better pic here: http://www.leeners.com/kegging.html
 
just a consideration.
it's possible that if its not your full keg that is over carbed. possibly because there was more head space in the not full keg that when you shokk it to carb there was more aggitation and surface area of beer/co2 and it would of over carbed more so than a full keg.
 
Yes, possibly. But I think it has more to do with the ABSOLUTE amount of CO2 gas under pressure. At the same pressure, 2 kegs with different headspace have different amounts of CO2 to dissolve into the beer. The one with more headspace will have that much more gas and that much less beer to carbonate. I didn't think of it at first, but now it makes sense (the gas:beer ratio, that is).
 
Excellent thread Fly Guy. I likely would have done the same thing. I would have tended to think in absolute gas pressure instead of volume as well.

Does anyone have any charts or graphs that speak to this issue?
 
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