Carbonation help

[FujiVT]

This is my first brew - I have been consuming commercial kegged beer at home and know my system fairly well - swapped out sanke for ball lock fittings etc.

My first beer - a pale ale extract kit everything went smoothly and I transfered out of primary and into keg 2 days ago. I put the keg in my kegerator (~34-36 degrees and it was sitting there for the past 2 days)

Today I attempted the 30 psi shake for 2 minutes force carb method. I could hear the beer bubbling so I thought everything was going to be fine (I likely stirred up all kinds of junk that settled out by doing this I think) Anyhow - I bled off the pressure (foam went everywhere) and set the C02 to 10psi serving pressure. I have 10 foot lines and Flow control Perlicks. I get ZERO flow from the tap. I can see beer in the line - and the beer does come out when I hit the poppet valve on the liquid out post. I tried increasing the pressure to 30 psi - still no beer. I verified the posts are connected and on the correct source. I even tried taking the tap off and connecting the gas and liquid to see if anything came flying out of the shank - just a tiny bit of foam and that is it. Can anyone tell me what I did wrong - or how many things I did wrong ;-)

Thanks!

 

[waldoar15]

Sure the line isn't frozen? I've had that happen when the beer line got caught between the keg and the chill plate.

 

[RuffRider]

Agree. Your beer line could be frozen. Check the placement.

If it comes out of the poppet on the corny itself, then it's doubtful you have a clogged serving dip tube. Only other things to check besides freezing is a clogged shank (maybe it has some junk in it?).

Besides that, the fact that you have 10 foot lines also caught my eye. Why do you have 10 feet of beer line? Normally five will do the trick.

 

[FujiVT]

Well examining the line I noticed a huge gob of sediment. I heated it up and squeezed it a bit and forced it out. Pouring all foam now - likely a bit overcarbed and a bit warm. I think I should be all set - will vent and get back down to regular levels in a few days

 

[FujiVT]

Lessons learned -

1. If you are going to cold crash in keg - don't shake it for carbing.
2. If you are not going to secondary and want to go straight to keg - leave it a little longer to maybe get less sediment in keg
3. Perhaps figure out a way to cold crash in primary in the fermonster?

 

[RM-MN]

Lessons learned -

1. If you are going to cold crash in keg - don't shake it for carbing.
2. If you are not going to secondary and want to go straight to keg - leave it a little longer to maybe get less sediment in keg
3. Perhaps figure out a way to cold crash in primary in the fermonster?

Leave off the part about secondary since your keg will be the secondary for you, and leave the beer in primary longer so most of the sediment settles out. If you want really clear beer going into your keg and beer that has matured a bit, leave it in the fementer for 3 to 12 weeks. The longer you leave it the more yeast settles out and the more "mature" the beer becomes.