need keggerator help - foam

[EricSS]

Hi, I have a marvel undercounter keggerator that can only get the beer down to 43 or so degrees for whatever stupid reason.

I only have about 3.5ft of line I think for each keg.

At the moment I have a homebrew and a microbrew attached to each tap.

The micro brew from the brewery pours perfectly, maybe a bit more head than ideal, but not much more.

The home brew pours almost pure foam and tastes flat at the same time. After the pour I can see bubbles in the line and going into the line from the connection.

I've had this problem with every home brew (3 so far) and I can't figure it out, nor do I understand the principle very well.

My friend pressurized the keg at his house under 30psi for a few days @ about 38degrees I'm guessing.

Can anyone help me figure this out?

Also, dies anyone know how I may fix the thermostat on my kegertor to allow it to cool more?

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

I believe most of your foaming is probably due to your serving lines only being 3.5' in length. Typically 10 foot is preferred with a few people getting 5' to work decent. But at 3.5' I don't believe your getting enough resistance in the serving line to keep the CO2 in solution with the beer. As for temp control. If you can't get cold enough with factory thermostat you could always remove it all together and hook up a STC-1000 temperature controller. Or Johnson's controller. That would be my recommendation. I use a STC-1000 on my fern fridge and have it down to 1.2C for lagering as we speak.

 

[EricSS]

I would agree with the line length being a problem, except that the commercial beer pours fine and I see no bubbles forming in the line.

I still plan on lengthing, but I think there must be some other problem.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]My friend pressurized the keg at his house under 30psi for a few days @ about 38degrees I'm guessing.[...]

Clearly, right there is the root cause of the foaming home brew keg: it's madly overcarbed.

Also, dies anyone know how I may fix the thermostat on my kegertor to allow it to cool more?

Depends on the specific built-in thermostat, but many can be "tweaked" by adjusting the calibration screw. Otherwise, plug the unit into an external controller...

Cheers!

 

[Paulgs3]

Clearly, right there is the root cause of the foaming home brew keg: it's madly overcarbed.

I go two days at 25psi at about 38-40, and then drop it down to 12 and let it sit for a few days. Mine is not over carbed.

Hail mary pass here: maybe junk in the poppet? I had hop junk from a bad siphon after dry hop. I actually had to pull off the poppet, jack the CO2 up to 30 and shoot out the "gunk". Think geyser, prepare for geyser. I lost a bit of beer and had quite the mess but mine was pouring fine after.

 

[EricSS]

Also, I'm running into another weird problem. The beer I just poured came out at 51 degrees, but a glass of water in my keggerator is reading 35 degrees ....

Is this normal?

And yes, the keg has been in the fridge for 5 days

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

Try using a larger volume of water for your temp probe. Using a small glass it will get colder faster than the large volume of beer. That should help get your temps down. Do you have any air circulation from a fan? Sometimes the temperature can stratify in the fridge/freezer which means you'll be colder on the bottom and warmer as you go up. Try placing the probe and water higher in the fridge to get the bulk if the kegs temp down lower?