Howhownow
Well-Known Member
I built a cold plate jockey box about a year ago. The plate has 2 runs, up until now I only used one as it gets the beer plenty cold (I'm talking sitting on the porch in the middle of summer down to icy cold). It's worked great from the get-go with my homebrews in pin locks. Pours great, cold beer (I am not sure if this is important or not for my current issue). My problem is when I hook up my sanke coupler and try to run a commercial brew. It is just FOAM. Best I can do is about 1/4 a pint good pour, the rest pure foam. I have tried sub kegerator serving pressure (~6psi) all the way to 30+. It pours best 20ish psi, but still nowhere near acceptable. I took it with me to a bachelor party a month ago and it poured us foamy beer for 3 straight days (keg sitting totally still in climate controlled kitchen).
This has all been a big pain, but it really came to a head (no pun intended) this weekend, when I put it into service pouring beer at that same buddy's wedding reception. I thought I could get it fixed up beforehand, but much to my embarrassment it sputtered foam the entire time. Luckily the catering guy manning it rolled with the punches and prepoured glasses to let them settle. That got beer to the people, but didn't help my anxiety about the whole thing.
Before the wedding I did some upgrades and tried to figure out what the heck was causing the foam. I needed to add a second tap (using the other plate run), so I thought that would be a good opportunity to test it. Up to this point I had been banking that it was an issue with my sanke coupler. This was ignoring the fact that same coupler pours fine in my kegerator. New coupler, faucet, lines in hand, I went about connecting the second tap. I clamped it all up, put a T on the gas in, iced the cold plate, tested for leaks, and went to pour my fist pint. I expected the first few pints not to be perfect...but they never improved. Varying levels of foam across all pressures, no acceptable pours. I then went back and replumbed the original run, reclamping, shortening hoses, taking out variables (like a QD in the beer line between the keg and the box), hoping this would fix the issue. Same result, foamy pours.
At this point, I was quite a bit more intoxicated than I had intended (what, I wasn't going to throw out the samples!), and with nothing else I could think to test and an early morning quickly approaching, I wrote it off as a shaken keg and went to bed. As related above, that turned out to not be the case.
It's time to resolve this issue and now, after running out of my own options, I turn to this community for help. Anything that could be thought to be tested or tried, I'm open to all suggestions.
My inclination, since I basically have tried two identical sets of equipment on both runs with similar results, is that it's something I'M doing with my hookup to/from the cold plate. That is unless there is something wrong with both runs in the plate, which I think is a long shot, especially since my homebrews pour OK (a strange detail that I just don't understand the logic of). I have built a couple kegerators, so have plenty of work with beer and gas lines and connections. The connections here seem pretty darn standard... I am just stumped.
Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but yeah, I am out of ideas.
This has all been a big pain, but it really came to a head (no pun intended) this weekend, when I put it into service pouring beer at that same buddy's wedding reception. I thought I could get it fixed up beforehand, but much to my embarrassment it sputtered foam the entire time. Luckily the catering guy manning it rolled with the punches and prepoured glasses to let them settle. That got beer to the people, but didn't help my anxiety about the whole thing.
Before the wedding I did some upgrades and tried to figure out what the heck was causing the foam. I needed to add a second tap (using the other plate run), so I thought that would be a good opportunity to test it. Up to this point I had been banking that it was an issue with my sanke coupler. This was ignoring the fact that same coupler pours fine in my kegerator. New coupler, faucet, lines in hand, I went about connecting the second tap. I clamped it all up, put a T on the gas in, iced the cold plate, tested for leaks, and went to pour my fist pint. I expected the first few pints not to be perfect...but they never improved. Varying levels of foam across all pressures, no acceptable pours. I then went back and replumbed the original run, reclamping, shortening hoses, taking out variables (like a QD in the beer line between the keg and the box), hoping this would fix the issue. Same result, foamy pours.
At this point, I was quite a bit more intoxicated than I had intended (what, I wasn't going to throw out the samples!), and with nothing else I could think to test and an early morning quickly approaching, I wrote it off as a shaken keg and went to bed. As related above, that turned out to not be the case.
It's time to resolve this issue and now, after running out of my own options, I turn to this community for help. Anything that could be thought to be tested or tried, I'm open to all suggestions.
My inclination, since I basically have tried two identical sets of equipment on both runs with similar results, is that it's something I'M doing with my hookup to/from the cold plate. That is unless there is something wrong with both runs in the plate, which I think is a long shot, especially since my homebrews pour OK (a strange detail that I just don't understand the logic of). I have built a couple kegerators, so have plenty of work with beer and gas lines and connections. The connections here seem pretty darn standard... I am just stumped.
Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but yeah, I am out of ideas.
