Over-carbed in Keg

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bnoe713

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Recently received a kegerator as a gift. Brewed a Bell's Two-Hearted Ale Clone. First batch into the 5-gallon pin lock corny. Put the beer on the gas at 30 psi for 1/2 an hour and shook the keg. Turned gas down to 12 psi and let it sit for 1 week. Turned gas down to 10 psi and tapped keg. First week of pours was well carbonated with a decent head. Now in the 2nd week, still at 10 psi and now it's pouring half a pint of head every time.

What did I screw up?
Can it be fixed?

Thanks for the help in advance and for all of the advice I've gotten from the forum already.

BNoe
 
Make sure you have a fairly long liquid side line and that it is staying cold. When I originally built my keggerator with a wood collar, I ran the lines to pegs on the collar to keep things tidy. I was getting all foam because the lines were about 10 degrees warmer than the kegs.
 
Line is likely too short. I have 12ft of line on my liquid side.

+1.

It's tough to get good, consistent pours with 5ft beer lines. I was getting a pretty good amount of foam (not quite excessive) in the first glass with my original 5ft lines, even with the temp at 38-39*F and the pressure set at 9psi.

When I switched all three of my keezer faucets to 12ft lines, I saw a nice improvement. I can set the reg at 12psi, get better carbing, smoother pours with less foam.

I tried the 30psi and shake method once. I'll never do it again. That batch never did clear up well.
 
Ok. Thanks for the input. I will change out the lines tonight. But I'm still curious as to why it poured fine the first week and got foamy on week 2. Is the 10 psi high enough to create this problem a week later?
 
Something may also be wrong with your faucet - perhaps some hop leaves got into it, causing extra agitation or the valve isn't fully opening. This happened to me last weekend - two kegs, same temp, same CO2 tank, different juice lines and faucets. One of the faucets wasn't opening fully and pouring out a half glass of foam until I isolated the problem.
 
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