1st Sankey D Coupled keg/All Foam!

[efreem01]

Hi Guys,

I just drove home ~7pm a keg of Sam Adams Oktoberfest to help along this festive holiday season. I'm still running a Chest Freezer kegarator with picnic taps and a 10# CO2 tank. I connected the CO2 tank to the Coupler at 10PSI and the Beer out to a picnic tap with 6' of hose. It's been sitting fairly idle for two hours and foam is jetting out of the picnic tap.

Does this have to do with running a Sankey keg through a picnic tap, still allowing the agitated beer to settle, or some other cause that i'm not aware of.

Will beer eventually pour out of this setup?

I was wondering if increasing the beer line to 10' would help alleviate the problem.

 

[Blender]

I would vent the keg as it may have been shaken up in the transport. Try it again and you may possibly have to turn the pressure down to maybe 8 PSI or so.

 

[efreem01]

OK, i've experimented with a dozen different CO2 pressure and i'm still having the All Foam problem. The 1st night i had a minor keg party with my brew buddies and i vented the keg and brought it down to 3 PSI for a decent beer trickle with limited head. I don't think the keg would stay carbed at 3 PSI though. So i kicked it up to 8 PSI just now and after a minute of hissing from the CO2 tank it was brought up to pressure. I sqeezed the picnic tap and foam went flying out of the nozzle. As a note, i'm using standard 5/16" id 7/16" OD vinyl tubing with the picnic tap and I theorize that the pressured beer is being bounced against the black picnic head and foaming up.

Any ideas? I will spend a few dollars if needed to pour beer without 3" of head.

 

[stevehaun]

You have a simple problem. Your tubing is too short! Seriously, the ID of your tubing is larger than most people use for a home system. I use tubing with an ID of 3/16" which has a pressure drop of 2 psi/foot. I dispense at 10 psi and use about 6 feet of tubing. You need either a longer piece of the same hose or a hose with a smaller ID. I would try 1/4" ID hose about 10-12 feet long or 3/16" ID hose about 6-7 feet long.

 

[EdWort]

It needs time to settle as well.

 

[efreem01]

Does the thicker 5/16 ID tubing require more PSI per foot or less to push the beer? Secondly, to disengage the tap and make this change can I vent the keg and pull up the handle on the keg coupler? Or should i just vent the keg and turn off CO2?

I've had very little experience with this Sankey coupler since it's my first time using it.

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

The 5/16 doesn't provide enough resistance to slow the flow down. Go down to the lhbs and buy 10 feet of 3/16 beer line. Set the co2 to the proper pressure for the beer (you can likely get that info from the Boston Beer website) . If the beer comes out too slow, you can trim the line back as needed. Keep in mind you may not have the keg carbonated correctly due to your experiments thus far, but you should be able to get it dialed in.

 

[mmb]

The 5/16 is WAY too big. That would be used for long haul trunk lines from remote keg coolers to bars. You want to use 3/16 ID.

I currently have a half barrel in the keg cooler and that took close to 12 hours to cool and settle after the trip home from the beer store. The 1/6 bbl I brought home that same day was fine within 2 hours.