2 much foam on tap #2

I thought I would experiment with my beer line lengths the other day. I use 3/16" id tubing and have been using 10' lengths. I put my second keg in my new keezer on tap and the pour seemed slow, so I cut it down to 8' and I get a half glass of foam on the first pour.

I started reading about balancing the system and using some online calculators it seems I should be using only 5' lines? If that is the case why do a get a fast pour on the first pint w/ 8' of line? Second consecutive pint has much less foam.

 

#1 question, how did you carb the beer? Overcarbed beer can cause a lot of problems.

I personally don't believe the 5' line thing the calculators spit out. Never got it to work. 10' lines meant a slower pour (10-12 sec per pint), but I get exactly what I want.

Also, are your lines chilled? Do you have a fan moving air around? 2nd pour being better than the 1st usually means warm spots in the line. It can also mean overcarbed beer.

 

The problem keg was forced carbed for 36 hours and then purged and set at serving pressure. I'm about half way through it now. How do reduce the carbonation in the keg?

My lines are chilled and I have a fan moving air.

 

OK, so carbonation is probably it. Give us more details?

36 hours @ ??? PSI @ ??? degrees F

Then you dropped it to ??? PSI @ ??? degrees F.

It's now been sitting at this serving pressure for ??? days.

Fill in those ???s for me, and we can get going...

 

I just hooked up a 3rd keg today that has been at 12 psi for 2 weeks and it is perfect with 10' lines. I think that the forced carb keg (#2) is over-carbed. I'm going to shut off the gas to it and purge it a for a while and see what happens.

I didn't think it would over carb with my procedure but it seems that it must have. Had it at 30 psi for 36 hrs @ 41 f. Then dropped it to 12 psi at the same temperature. I think that I'm going to go with the 'set it and forget it' procedure from now on.

 

If you leave it at 12 PSI long enough, it will equilibrate. That should take like 2 weeks though.

Faster is take it off the gas and purge it.

Faster still is take it off the gas, take it out of the fridge, (so it warms up), and purge it.

Fastest is take it off the gas, out of the fridge, and open the relief valve and leave it open. No worries about oxidation as CO2 coming out of soln will maintain positive pressure in the keg.

I had a massively overcarbed set of kegs a little while ago. (Reg effed up and they all shot up to 30 PSI for over a week!). I took em out of the fridge in the evening. In the morning, once they'd warmed, I opened the relief valves. By night time, they were UNDERCARBED again....so just keep an eye on them.