New Keg Carbination Fail? HELP!

Hey All,

The wife and I got a new keg with CO2 tank and tried to use it. We are new to brewing but have been totally successful working with bottles. We transferred the beer (a red ale) from the primary to the keg, added the correct amount (1/3 cup) of sugar, then pressurized with 5lbs of CO2 immediately.

In the few days that followed we noticed that the pressure was rising up to well over 20lbs of pressure. We became concerned and tried to drop the pressure, bleeding off some and ultimately disconnecting the CO2. When we tapped tonight we got a couple of glasses of 100% foam. The foam would settle into a nice tasting but totally flat beer Again, we thought too much pressure could be the culprit and bleed off some more from the keg. This gave us some more carbonated beer, but not by much.

Options??? We're having a party we had hoped to serve the keg at tomorrow and I'd love to salvage the situation as much as possible. What can I do in the next 20 hours to fix this up?

Also, what can we do next time to avoid this issue in the future?

Thanks for any help-
keep it real.

Im new to all this as well but i have not heard of doing both natural carbonation with sugar and force carb with co2. for me i never use sugar. I put the keg in to cool down and set it on my serving pressure of 12-14 lbs and leave it for a week to 10 days. To hurry it along I have pumped the co2 up to 30 and shaken the keg around. By doing this and leaving the keg to sit overnight you can hurry the process along. Just have to be sure to bleed off the pressure to get it back to a serving pressure.

It makes sense that you have an entire glass of foam. This is because of the pressure being too high. The reason why the beer doesn't hold the carbonation is because the CO2 isnt fully saturated in the liquid. bucfanmike gave the secret to fast carbonation. Just like you can shake a bottle of pepsi or coke to quickly remove the CO2 from the liquid, you can shake pressurized liquid into beer. Pressurize the keg and shake it. If you shake while the line is connected to the keg, you can actually hear the gas running through the regulator and into the beer as you shake the keg. Its pretty cool actually.

Because you naturally carbonated the beer with a small amount of sugar, it created its own CO2 and seemingly over pressurized the keg. Is this at room temperature? Natural carbonation generally happens at room temperature, but the problem with it is that the pressure is high. If you place a keg with too high a pressure in the refrigerator, the pressure will drop because the beer can hold a greater amount of CO2. So lets say at room temp it was at 20psi and you lowered the temp to 40 degrees. After a day or so, the pressure would drop to maybe 10 psi. This is so because colder beer holds more CO2 than warmer beer.

For right now, boost the pressure up (30), shake, lower the pressure and chill. In that order. Store and serve around 8 psi.

DarkNoonBrewer said:

Because you naturally carbonated the beer with a small amount of sugar, it created its own CO2 and seemingly over pressurized the keg. Is this at room temperature? Natural carbonation generally happens at room temperature, but the problem with it is that the pressure is high. If you place a keg with too high a pressure in the refrigerator, the pressure will drop because the beer can hold a greater amount of CO2. So lets say at room temp it was at 20psi and you lowered the temp to 40 degrees. After a day or so, the pressure would drop to maybe 10 psi. This is so because colder beer holds more CO2 than warmer beer.

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This. At room temperature, the psi for carbonation needs to be around 30 psi. Chilling it after two weeks or so would cause the co2 to go into the beer, giving you perfect carbonation. Just like with bottles. Trying to dispense it warm, though, would be a warm foamy mess. When you prime with sugar, you give it a shot of co2 to seat the lid, but then disconnect the gas. You don't use both gas and priming sugar- just one or the other.

I'm not a fan of shaking beer, so I can't give any input on that. What I would do right away is chill the keg and let it sit still for a bit to check the carbonation. If it's low, you may have to resort to shaking, but I'd try it cold first.

I agree with Darknoon and Yooper. To summarize:

*add sugar, seal keg, hit with 30 PSI of CO2.

*DISCONNECT CO2 immediately afterwards

*Let sit 2 weeks at room temp. Yeast will eat sugar, beer will carbonate. Don't fuss with it! Don't reconnect to CO2, don't bleed CO2, don't touch the keg for 2 weeks.

*Chill for a day or two in the fridge, (BEFORE pulling any beer OR connecting CO2)

*After chilled, reconnect CO2 at dispensing pressure, (10-12 PSI, typically).

*Dispense beer, get drunk, be happy :fro:

Those are great practices shorty, but the party is tonight!

DarkNoonBrewer said:

Those are great practices shorty, but the party is tonight!

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Well, I assume the keg is chilled now. How is the carb level?