Foamy first pour out of kegerator. Following pours perfect.

I did substantial reading on the subject and it seems the consensus is that the tubing in the draft tower is not cold and is allowing CO2 to come out of solution. I can actually see CO2 pockets in my beer lines. For the first pour the cycle is foam-beer-foam-beer. After the first pour the others are all good, that is until i leave the kegerator alone for a time.

Is the only way to correct this to install a computer fan to keep the inside of the tower cool?

I am confident it is not a beer line length issue. I have 5 foot of 3/16 lines. If you feel you can convince me otherwise I look forward to hearing the reasons.

Thanks.

 

Yeah, you need to chill the lines somehow. I Chill mine with a pond pump and Rv antifreeze, it's in my signature. I still get some foam, but not more than 1/3 of a glass and only in the hottest temperatures in the summer

 

It seems if you only have a foamy first pour every time you go for a round of beers, you have it about as perfect as you can expect. Mine does the same thing every time I let the taps rest for a while and my beer lines all stay pretty cold. Once the first beer is poured the rest pour perfectly. I wouldn't make any adjustments just to have a perfect first pour if all the following pours are fine. Home brewers probably tend to let their taps rest a while longer than a pub or brewery would letting that ever so slight build up of pressure purge out on that first beer. I doubt a fan would make the difference and probably not worth your time/money/modification to your kegerator.

 

Thanks for the input fellows. I may conduct a series of experiments to determine wether or not an upgrade is worth it.

 

I'm confident that a significant part of your issue is indeed line length. It is tricky to get good, consistent pours with 5ft lines even if everything else is dialed in well. Been there, done that and had similar problems with the first glass being more foamy. When you first open the tap, the beer wants to come out at a higher velocity which causes foaming when it hits the glass. Now I use 12ft of 3/16" line on all three taps. It slows the beer down some and I enjoy much, much better (and consistent) pours.

Line length, warmer tower, service temperature and pressure are all inter-related and all play a part in the issue you are having. What are your temps and pressure?

To blow cold air up into the tower, you can rig a computer fan powered by a 12v wall charger. Simple, cheap and it moves plenty of air.

 

Ill try and hook up an additional 10 feet of line and see if that helps. However i had good pours when my kegerator was in my garage with outside temp similar to inside kegerator temp.

 

I totally agree with BigFloyd, your five feet puts you on the edge when everything is perfect, but add a few degrees of thermocline and there goes the foam.

Switch to 10 or 12 foot 3/16" lines, coil them on top of your kegs if possible. You can cobble up a tower cooler for fairly small $$ with a 40mm 12VDC fan, a tiny hobby box and a piece of tubing. Otherwise, if you don't have some kind of air mover inside your kegerator/keezer, consider adding one, as stratification happens, and there can be a big difference in temperature between the bottom of the keg (where the dip tube picks up) and your faucets...

Cheers!

 

I completely disagree. "As perfect as you can expect" means a perfect pour every time, and all OP needs to achieve it is colder lines.

The 5' of tubing isn't ideal, but if it's really only your first pour that's foamy then I'd just try to keep the tower cool first before changing anything else. A PC fan is very cheap and easy to install, but there are also passive solutions like copper rods or tubing that act as heatsinks to cool the tower.

 

I don't really understand why 5 foot of lines is not ideal. There was an article on beersmith that calculated resistance in lines. The parameters in their example where the same as my setup and it came out to 3.66 feet of beer line. I am guessing i still would get a foamy first pour with 10
foot of lines.

I am tweaking my fridge temps. Just realized my thermostat was not set correctly after I had moved it from garage to indoors. Cold air above the kegs was only 45 F. I am now aiming for 40 F and will see.

 

The line length calculators make a lot of assumptions that render them irrelevant for most home kegerators. Line resistance is not a fixed number, it's dependent on a lot of factors including temperature, carb level and most importantly the speed of beer in the line. While 5' works for some people, most of us use 10-12. The only downside of a longer line is a slower pour. Not a problem for a home system.

 

I have no trouble with 5' lines. But line is cheap so it's probably worth tryin if that first glass bothers you enough.

 

You have it right. Beer line length has nothing to do with CO2 coming out of solution. Line length is only for flow rate.

 

Well, if the flow rate is too fast as the beer exits the faucet, CO2 comes out of solution and you have foam problems. So this is a very misleading statement. But I do agree that line length isn't the issue in this case since it's only the first pour.

As far as I know, foamy first pours can only be caused by 1) the lines being warmer than the keg, or 2) the beer is overcarbed relative to the current pressure, and CO2 is slowly coming out of solution to even things out. With #2, eventually the carb level will come down and the problem goes away.

This is almost certainly due to warm lines/tower. In general though, many foam issues (including this one) can be exacerbated by short lines, which is why others are recommending lengthening them.

 

How can I be misleading? You are saying the same thing. I agree first pour foam are caused by two things lines being to warm or to wrong PSI. Longer lines will not help, all it will do is put more beer in worm lines = more CO2 coming out of solution. I also agree if the flow rate is too fast as the beer exits the faucet, CO2 comes out of solution and you have foam problems. The only way to control flow is with longer lines.

 

Make sure your lines are cold all the way to the taps. My guess is they aren't, and the beer that sits in your lines isn't cold. That is a surefire recipe for foam. If you are only getting a foamy first pour, it's 99.9% sure that it's your lines that are too warm.

If you're using an insulated tap tower, try putting a pre-fab pipe insulator piece inside of your tower and install a fan to blow cold air into the tower. I'll be surprised if that doesn't solve the issue.

Remember that heat rises, and with the small cross-section of your tower, unless there is a good air circulation mechanism in place the warmest air will collect in the tower.

 

You said line length has nothing to do with CO2 coming out of solution. Since lines that are too short will result in CO2 coming out of solution as the beer exits the faucet, your statement is misleading.

 

Y'all can argue about it ad nauseum, but I've observed first hand that longer lines (switching from 5ft to 12ft) can really help with the "first pour is foamy" issue described by the OP. That, along with circulating the cold air inside the unit, will very likely solve his problem.

 

I appreciate all the info thus far. I have an additional question.

A beer that is close to freezing will absorb more CO2 than a beer at higher temperatures. PSI remains the same. Is that correct?

 

Yes, Henry's Law for the CO2/water system says that the amount of dissolved CO2 is a function of both the pressure and temperature. So if you drop the temperature but don't drop the pressure accordingly, the beer will take on more carbonation. There are carbonation charts and calculators that let you know how much pressure is appropriate at a given temperature.

 

So longer lines actually compounded my problem. Since I have more hose bundled up in the warm top of my kegerator. I adjusted the thermostat lower but had freezing problems. Tweaked it as well as possible and am getting less foamy first pours. I think i might install the computer fan to circulate the air as I think the thermostat sensor is close to the base of my tower so it is getting funky readings that result in a large inner fridge temperature differential.

 

So longer lines actually compounded my problem. Since I have more hose bundled up in the warm top of my kegerator. I adjusted the thermostat lower but had freezing problems. Tweaked it as well as possible and am getting less foamy first pours. I think i might install the computer fan to circulate the air as I think the thermostat sensor is close to the base of my tower so it is getting funky readings that result in a large inner fridge temperature differential.

 

My recommendation is to dump the first 2 ounces that gets poured. It's not really the first full pour that is a problem but the inrush of beer that fills the partially empty lines really kicks out a lot CO2. Once the lines are full and things even out, you're on your 3rd ounce of the pour or so. So, ounce 4 through 16 will actually pour a lot better than ounce 1 through 12 would.

 

Why would the beer line be "partially empty"?

A well tuned dispensing system won't have "first pour" problems...

Cheers!

 

I think it is the CO2 that comes out of solution due to temperature differential however i am not 100% sure.

 

So i installed my computer fan and it is
Blowing right up into the tower. I removed all the extra line i installed so
I am back to the 5 foot line that came with my kegerator kit. I am back to lovely quick pours that leave, what I consider, a perfect amount of head.

Although I love tinkering and this hobby i should have just trusted myself and the minority if people in this thread and not listened to the majority who advised on longer lines. With longer lines i got no head and super slow pours.

 

.

 

Glad you're happy, but sorry, longer lines don't inhibit head. Just the opposite, they sustain the carbonation all the way to the glass. Of course, if there are other factors at play - like a significant problem with temperature stratification, longer lines sitting in the warm zone will likely lead to breakout problems like you observed. You likely solved the temperature problem with the fan, but misattribute that correction to shortening the line as well...

Cheers!

 

Your right. Some bars have 50 foot lines. Duh!!!!