Kegerator help!

Hello everyone! I have an issue and would love someone to unravel this mystery for me. I have a kegerator and recently placed a 1/2 barrel of store bought beer in it. For some reason when I pour the beer it never seems to get a good mix of co2. I will get a head but there will not be any significant carbonation. What am I doing wrong? What can I do/buy to fix this issue?

What is your kegerator temp and what PSi are you running you CO2? I have done the same thing before with a half barrel of stone arrogant bastard. For me I let the keg sit in the cooler for a week before I tapped it, and at 36 degrees I measured the keg pressure at 23 PSI, over carbonated. They might do this since a bar has long lines to their tap. Either way I vented the keg pressure over a couple of day down to 11 psi and the beer pored just fine. Sounds like you might be pouring too fast or maybe have a dirty tap. Both of those probles will give you lots of head and knock out all the CO2 in the poured beer.
Hope that helps

Ok please walk me through this, how do i measure the co2 in the keg? What's the best way to clean the tap? How do i know I'm pouring at the right rate?

On a regular 1/2 barrel keg is it a little harder to measure the pressure than on a 5 gallon keg. I hooked my gas line up to the keg and slowly turned up my gas until I could just start to hear gas going into the keg.

When I clean my taps I use PBW and totally disassemble the tap and brush it out. Just filling a keg with PBW and pressurize the keg and run the PBW through it will do a good job but I like to make sure it is clean. I do use flow control taps which makes it easier to to achieve a good pour rate but they are 100 bucks and when I clean them they break down into about 20 parts. If you use regular forward sealing perlick taps then you are in good shape for cleaning just running PBW through it is all you need to do. Some home brew shops have good cleaning kits if you don't have a spare keg around. Tristate Beer and Wine crafting has a good one that they made (they are local to me), I don't see it on their web sight but just give them a call. Here is one for a sankey tap setup http://www.kegworks.com/5-liter-dra...BtdWU-cYRcg2g6omlGjy3bIpcrdw&acid=linkshare&=

For flow rate you want something that is nice and smooth, look for a you tube video and see how fast some fills a glass that should give you a good idea on what you need. To slow the rate that you are filling a glass with a regular tap you have two choices. 1 lower the keg pressure. 2 reduce the ID of you beer line and/or make the length of the tubing longer to add more line resistance. If you lower the keg pressure you need to do it slowly over a couple of days or it will make the beer more foamy, the big down side to that is it takes days and you are left with beer with less carbonation. Here is a chart that shows at what temperature and pressure is good for the beer ( you want to be in the green). http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php
Line resistance is the best way to do it, that way you have good carbonation on your beer. Changing the tubing is a pain and flow control taps add line resistance but they are more expensive. Perlick came out with a new flow control tap that should work with your shank, I have one but have never used it, I was trying to make a party tap out of it and I need to get a piece made for it to work. However the perlick flow control tap cost about 1/2 as much ans the european flow control taps and taking the perlick apart to clean them there is about 7 parts. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/us-flow-control-faucet-forward-seal.html I don't know how it works but it looks like the European Flow Control taps might be better but they have only one tail shank length so mounting might be a problem for you.

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