Beer gun question.

[CharlosCarlies]

Been using our beer gun sporadically w/ reasonably good results, but there is one thing that's been bothering me. It seems like the only way to get a nice, slow fill is to bleed the head pressure off the keg to about 5 psi which concerns me for a couple reasons:

1) I like being able to purge the bottles w/ higher pressure
2) Wouldn't this cause off-gassing/foaming in the keg because of the pressure drop?

My question is why doesn't the beer gun come w/ longer beer line to increase resistance enough to allow for normal serving/saturation pressure? While I'd like to be able to purge w/ even higher pressure (might setup a secondary regulator for this), 10-12 psi vs 5 would certainly be an improvement and the potential off-gassing would be completely resolved.

Where am I going wrong here?

 

[number40fan]

Can you add a longer line?

 

[CharlosCarlies]

That's what I was planning on doing, just wanted to make sure it would work and was curious as to how Blichmann could over-look something simple like that!

 

[chickypad]

Releasing the pressure doesn't cause foaming in the keg, the beer doesn't immediately off gas. Why would you need to purge the bottles with higher pressure? It's not like the bottle is holding that pressure. My only issue with venting the keg would be releasing aroma from a hoppy beer, so if I'm going to bottle some I try to do them all at once so as to mininize that effect. I'm sure you could try a longer line if you're set on dispesning as regular serving pressure, though the thing is already 10 ft.

 

[CharlosCarlies]

Releasing the pressure doesn't cause foaming in the keg, the beer doesn't immediately off gas.

Maybe I'm wrong, but this doesn't make sense to me. Seems like any pressure drop has the ability to cause foaming w/ obviously the bigger the drop, the more foam. For example, why else would we counter-pressure fill kegs? I know for a fact when we fill kegs too quickly (creating too big of a pressure differential), we get a lot more foaming out the relief side of the filler.

Why would it be different sitting in the keg? 5-7 PSI is a pretty big drop...especially when done reasonably quickly.

Why would you need to purge the bottles with higher pressure?

This is more of a speed concern. Higher pressure just makes purging faster.

 

[chickypad]

Trust me, the undisturbed beer in the keg does not foam. I have opened many carbonated kegs over the years for various reasons, in fact I just did it this morning to fish out some dry hops that seemed to be getting grassy. Release all the pressure, pop the lid, the surface of the beer is always smooth as glass. Now the act of transferring of course can cause foaming, so yes IME it's best to do that at low pressure. Or if you add something, like a bunch of new dry hops to create nucleation points - that foams like an SOB.

Edit: also a few seconds of purging at 3-5 psi should be plenty.