Balancing keg - flat beer

[acott]

I've had a kegerator for about 6 months and absolutely love it. I threw it together because I wanted beer on draft asap. But looking back, I should of put more thought in to it.

The major problem I've had, is that the beer in the line would go flat, making the first pour from the keg useless, but the keg would be carbonated. Is this because my line was too long? it was 10ft of 3/16".

My tap is around 2.3ft from the middle of the keg. Looking at this calculator http://www.iancrockett.com/brewing/info/kegbalance.shtml I should only have around 2-3 ft of line, could this be my solution?

Any help is greatly appreciated

 

[day_trippr]

The linked line length calculator - like roughly 99.9% of them - makes a fundamental error that renders the entire exercise utterly useless.

The only beer line length calculator worth using doesn't make that mistake. And it'll show your 10' of 3/16" ID is hella closer to the proper solution than a 2-3' line.

Beer shouldn't lose carbonation in the lines, unless the lines are wicked permeable - which I don't think they are. Perhaps the problem is the beer is warming up in the line, which would cause some CO2 to break out.

If you don't have a small fan keeping the air in your dispensing system stirred up, consider installing one...

Cheers!

 

[Rockn_M]

One thing to also keep in mind is if you have tap tower the beer in the tower will warm up causing the Co2 to come out of solution as well. This will cause the first pint poured to foam and then be flat. If you have a tower then you can add a little computer fan to blow the cold fridge air up into the tower. I did this and it pretty much solved my foaming issues.

 

[acott]

Cheers folks, kegging tonight hopefully all goes well!

 

[pat10323]

+1 on just installing a Little fan ..but u might still have some foaming issues...maybe buy the flow controll faucet. It might help with the first pour or 2 instead of all foam..plus I hated my old sticky tap when I went 2 go pour a beer after a couple days