Avoiding Beer Showers during Keg change-out

[RDbrew]

Seems like whenever I swap out kegs theres is a 1 in 3 chance of outcome - everything goes smoothly, I get a small spritz of beer, or the poppet jams open and I get showered in beer until I can fix it or the CO2 or beer run out.

Anyone else run into this or have tips to avoid it? I'm going to try re-soaking everything (poppets + springs) in Oxyclean free and see how that goes.

Kegs hold pressure just fine and don't have any leaks during storage or in use

 

[wysiwyg]

Pull the pressure relieve valve to release all the keg pressure first?

 

[m00ps]

you could try replacing the poppets. I keep 2-3 "universal" poppets in my stash of spare keg parts in case something goes wrong. Or just depressurize your keg before swapping

 

[dude3516]

So do I understand correctly that you're moving liquid lines between kegs with gas on them?

If so you either need to replace the poppets or go ahead and keep a tool handy for the occasion. I actually have a little pick that I use for disassembling my posts when doing maintenance and works handy in a pinch for re-seating a poppet when I remove my kegs gas post for long term storage.

 

[FloppyKnockers]

It's the money shot that tells you you're done. I try to do it in slow-mo and make it sexy.

 

[gnef]

It sounds like you are transferring a lot of trub over to your kegs. Do you try to get every last drop from your fermenter into the kegs? If so, you may want to consider increasing your boil volume by .5 gallon, and leave some beer in the fermenter so that you can get trub-free beer into the keg.

If you are dry hopping in the keg, make sure you are using a good nylon bag with no holes in it, or you can get one of those fancy stainless mesh tubes.

Also, you may need to break down your kegs after they are empty to make sure there is nothing in the liquid dip tube and in the poppet area of the post.

Also, check your poppets themselves, and see if they are sticky, or if the gasket seal is out of round or pressed out of shape. You may just want to replace your poppets anyway just to make sure they are not the problem. I personally use the universal poppets now, and am very happy with them.

With all that said, no, you should not have that much beer coming out when you take off the disconnect, and it is a symptom of another problem that you should remedy, and these problems will go away.

Hope this helps!