Awful Head Retention after Faucet Cleaning

[BryanEBIAB]

My perlick faucet was dripping so I gave it a good cleaning. The drip is gone but now my head retention is awful! Same beer, same psi, same everything else. I disassembled everything, gave it all a light scrub with dish soap, rinsed very well, sanitized in StarSan, put some food-safe silicone lube on the moving parts and o-rings, sanitized again and reassembled.

I know the dish soap can kill your head retention so I was very careful to rinse everything. Is it the StarSan? The silicone lube? Must I have missed some soap? More importantly, should is disassemble and try to remove whatever it is or wait it out and hopefully the flowing beer washes away the culprit?

This reminds me of the time I asked a mechanic to flush the radiator in my beat up old overheating van. He told me the gunk in there was probably plugging up a thousand leaks and it’d be best to just drive the poor thing into the ground.

 

[Bobby_M]

It's the silicone. If you look up Fermcap-S, it's basically an additive that with only a few drops in your boil it will stop foam from forming. Try making a tiny amount of starsan and put it in a sealed bottle. Shake it so it's all foam. Drop one drop of your silicone lube in there and give it a swirl. Report back.

 

[BryanEBIAB]

I’ll trust you, Bobby_M!

It’s gotten better in the last couple days and I’m less frustrated and annoyed than I was initially. Hopefully my next line-washing routine takes care of it. The internet says the thing to remove silicone lube residue is… alcohol. Lesson learned and may future googlers heed this warning: careful putting silicone-based lube on your keg faucet gaskets!