Beer Line Length and Pressure Calculator

[gmtech825]

very nice, i was wondering when someone would do this.

 

[kcwcc]

Nicely done...thank you.

 

[nathan]

I've had a chance to balance and set up 3 kegs and they are pouring great using this.

 

[OakLeaf]

It is very nice job!

Is it possible to to make version with temperature in Celsius, length in meters and pressure in bars ?

It will be very helpful for European users

 

[kcwcc]

It is very nice job!

Is it possible to to make version with temperature in Celsius, length in meters and pressure in bars ?

It will be very helpful for European users

And Canadians too! Other than bar of course...psi rules here...and kilopascals are generally ignored too.

 

[Bearcat Brewmeister]

By popular demand - okay, maybe not popular demand, but 2 people asked - the Beer Line Length Calculators in full metric, and for Canadians, partial metric (pressure in psi).

View attachment Metric and Canadian Beer Line Length Calculators.zip

 

[OakLeaf]

Thank you very much!

 

[Mayday99]

Awesome, thanks!

Looks like I am going to need a long line for my Hefe this summer!

 

[Panagiotis]

By popular demand - okay, maybe not popular demand, but 2 people asked - the Beer Line Length Calculators in full metric, and for Canadians, partial metric (pressure in psi).

3 people Thanks!!

 

[Panagiotis]

Guess who has perfect pours now.....great job m8.....just great

 

[HeyNoPie]

I have a keezer in my basement with a tap in my kitchen and I just can't seem to get it right. I'm dispensing Yuengling Lager at 48 degrees, but anything near 19 PSI (as directed by the sheet) just shoots out foam.

Beer Line I.D.: 1/4"
Shank Bore ID: 3/16"
Height from Keg Center to Tap: 120"
Distance from Beer Out Connector to Shank: 144"
Length of Hose: 240"

It seems I'm not even close. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[mmonacel]

TA lot of folks use a set line length, then adjust pressure until it flows right. That is back asswards. You should set your pressure to the correct serving pressure for the beer style at the particular temperature you are at, then size your line (length AND diameter) to scrub off all of the excess pressure such that your beer flows correctly.

I'm just in the planning stages of getting into kegging so bear with me, but I don't see the difference here. Having to keep and change out various different line lengths and diameters just to keep the pressure the same seems unnecessary. Again, it may be my lack of knowledge, but assuming you have set the line up to flow upwards to the tap, why is there a difference between increasing / decreasing the pressure vs. line length on the final output of beer? Isn't over/under carbonation due to line length or too high or low pressure the same thing (just different methods)?

Would a slightly over carbed beer due to line length taste any different than an over carbed beer (of the same amount) due to the pressure being too high? Assuming not (again - maybe my ignorance), I'd much rather just twist a knob than change out tubes just to hit a "proper" psi rating on my CO2 dial. Can someone educate me here?

 

[Bearcat Brewmeister]

I'm just in the planning stages of getting into kegging so bear with me, but I don't see the difference here. Having to keep and change out various different line lengths and diameters just to keep the pressure the same seems unnecessary. Again, it may be my lack of knowledge, but assuming you have set the line up to flow upwards to the tap, why is there a difference between increasing / decreasing the pressure vs. line length on the final output of beer? Isn't over/under carbonation due to line length or too high or low pressure the same thing (just different methods)?

Would a slightly over carbed beer due to line length taste any different than an over carbed beer (of the same amount) due to the pressure being too high? Assuming not (again - maybe my ignorance), I'd much rather just twist a knob than change out tubes just to hit a "proper" psi rating on my CO2 dial. Can someone educate me here?

Line length does not cause over or under carbonation - the psi you set does. Over and under carbonation are relative terms based on the style of beer. A Belgian ale is properly served with much more carbonation than a Scottish ale. If you served a Belgian ale at proper Scottish ale carbonation, it would be too flat. If you served a Scottish ale at proper Belgian ale carbonation, it would be overcarbonated. The question you want to ask yourself is, "Do I want to drink the beer I brew at the carbonation level that is correct for the style?" For many homebrewers, the answer is yes, since for many beers, the bite or lack of from carbonation interplays with the flavors of the ingredients and is one reason we brew in the first place - to get the best tasting beer we can. If the answer is yes, you set your psi at the level that is correct for the style at the temperature it is at and the beer will be holding the correct carbonation. Then, it is just a fluid dynamics problem to get the beer to pour correctly. Beer will pour correctly if it comes out the tap around 1psi. For that to happen, you restrict the flow with beer line - the longer the line and smaller the diameter, the more pressure is removed (note - pressure removed, not carbonation). The calculator is doing the math for you to get from the pressure set for correct carbonation levels to 1 psi at the tap.

 

[Bearcat Brewmeister]

I have a keezer in my basement with a tap in my kitchen and I just can't seem to get it right. I'm dispensing Yuengling Lager at 48 degrees, but anything near 19 PSI (as directed by the sheet) just shoots out foam.

Beer Line I.D.: 1/4"
Shank Bore ID: 3/16"
Height from Keg Center to Tap: 120"
Distance from Beer Out Connector to Shank: 144"
Length of Hose: 240"

It seems I'm not even close. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Is the keg at 48 degrees as well? If you have temperature variation from the keg to the tap, that is a recipe for foam.

 

[HeyNoPie]

My keezer is set to 48 degrees, and I left it overnight, so I would assume it equalized out by now. To cool the beer lines, I have a 6 gallon metal bucket of water being pumped through copper alongside the beer lines. This is all wrapped in a foam insulation. The starting temperature for the coolant is 54 while the keezer is at 48. I can pour four pints in a row that are 99% foam. If it were a matter of temperature, I would have thought that the beer would start to cool the lines by the last pint. Is there anything I might be missing?

 

[Bearcat Brewmeister]

My keezer is set to 48 degrees, and I left it overnight, so I would assume it equalized out by now. To cool the beer lines, I have a 6 gallon metal bucket of water being pumped through copper alongside the beer lines. This is all wrapped in a foam insulation. The starting temperature for the coolant is 54 while the keezer is at 48. I can pour four pints in a row that are 99% foam. If it were a matter of temperature, I would have thought that the beer would start to cool the lines by the last pint. Is there anything I might be missing?

Not sure what to tell you. Many will recommend that you turn the pressure down. That may indeed stop it from foaming, but at 48 degrees in the keg, CO2 does not want to go into solution so with lower pressure settings, you eventually will be drawing non-foamy flat beer. Is it possible the keg was over carbed to start with? Possibly try shutting off the gas and bleeding the keg pressure a few times over a few hour period, then turning the gas back on.

 

[HeyNoPie]

I can certainly make it colder if that'd help. I only raised the temperature because that was what the spreadsheet recommended. I'm only on my second keg and basically wasted most of the first as well. Towards the end of that, I had the beer at 40 with the pressure a little over 8PSI and that basically worked.

I've dropped the temperature a bit and I'll try bleeding it like you mentioned

 

[Whut]

HNP, check out this thread from the MicroMatic beer forum. Hopefully that will help. It appears to me that you've got it to warm. Also appears that you may not have your 10ft rise cold enough.

For shorter runs usually a fan can be hooked up to cool the beer line but I don't know if there's one big enough to keep 10ft. cool. Glycol may be your answer but those setups can be quite pricy. Dig around in the MM forums and I'm sure you'll find plenty of alternative suggestions and or answers to your specific issue.

 

[HeyNoPie]

Thanks for the thought. I'll poke around there some more. I turned down the temperature a bit and that does seem to help (40% foam instead of 100%).

I apologize if I'm hijacking your thread and I'll create a new one if it makes sense, but can someone help me better understand the relationship between CO2 pressure and temperature? I thought that colder beer could contain more CO2, but the output of the spreadsheet seems to indicate that the beer should be warmer and more pressurized in my case. I interpreted my foam as CO2 breaking out of the beer, and since colder beer can contain more CO2, I would want my beer colder. I suspect one of my fundamental understandings is very wrong, so feel free to correct me

 

[brian1]

Now, for any of you that want the CORRECT length of hose based upon the principles of physics, mechanical engineering, and fluid mechanics...

l = 1800*d/Q²*(p-0.44h),

where:
l = hose length (ft)
d = hose ID (in)
Q = flow rate (gpm)
p = gage pressure of barrel (psi)
h = height difference between middle of keg and faucet (ft)

So if you've got a keg that you'd like at 12psi, the faucet is 2ft above the middle of the keg, you're using 3/16" tubing, and you'd like a flow rate of 0.7gpm:

l = 1800*0.1875/0.7²*(12-0.44*2) = 9.5ft.

(If the faucet is above the keg, h is positive; if the keg is above the faucet, h is negative.)

 

[Bearcat Brewmeister]

Now, for any of you that want the CORRECT length of hose based upon the principles of physics, mechanical engineering, and fluid mechanics...

l = 1800*d/Q²*(p-0.44h),

where:
l = hose length (ft)
d = hose ID (in)
Q = flow rate (gpm)
p = gage pressure of barrel (psi)
h = height difference between middle of keg and faucet (ft)

So if you've got a keg that you'd like at 12psi, the faucet is 2ft above the middle of the keg, you're using 3/16" tubing, and you'd like a flow rate of 0.7gpm:

l = 1800*0.1875/0.7²*(12-0.44*2) = 9.5ft.

(If the faucet is above the keg, h is positive; if the keg is above the faucet, h is negative.)

Or, you could use the calculator which is based upon the principles of physics, mechanical engineering, and fluid mechanics. Using a flow rate of 1 gallon per minute, typical for a draft system, the answers come to approximately the same as the formula above (very minor differences due to rounding of parameters or assumptions on friction factors).

Free spreadsheet to use without any condescending caps - cheers!

 

[brian1]

"Free spreadsheet to use without any condescending caps - cheers"

Thanks. That's about what I figured. Admin, feel free to delete my account.

 

[jgourd]

"Free spreadsheet to use without any condescending caps - cheers"

Thanks. That's about what I figured. Admin, feel free to delete my account.

Personally, we'd all like to learn here. So for the OP who authored the spreadsheet, why not unprotect the damn thing so we can see the formulas and better our understanding of the ideas behind beer line length. I don't understand the infatuation with protecting stuff so others can't see how you did what you did. I mean it's a "free" spreadsheet, right? Why not let us see the workings so we can tweak and so on? Gah! I don't get it.

 

[brian1]

I can produce every equation, reference, and assumption used and/or made throughout the derivation of my aforementioned mathematical relationship; however, doing so would certainly be too... well, condescending. "Cheers."

 

[jgourd]

I can produce every equation, reference, and assumption used and/or made throughout the derivation of my aforementioned mathematical relationship; however, doing so would certainly be too... well, condescending. "Cheers."

That wasn't directed to you. It was directed to the OP who authored the spreadsheet. Personally, I feel you have been open with your methods, and in this hobby, we need that. I think it's the openness and sharing of ideas, tools, and such that have advanced this hobby.

 

[Bearcat Brewmeister]

Personally, we'd all like to learn here. So for the OP who authored the spreadsheet, why not unprotect the damn thing so we can see the formulas and better our understanding of the ideas behind beer line length. I don't understand the infatuation with protecting stuff so others can't see how you did what you did. I mean it's a "free" spreadsheet, right? Why not let us see the workings so we can tweak and so on? Gah! I don't get it.

Much of the instruction I have had and feedback received over time pertaining to application design in spreadsheets is to make the user interface as clean and error proof as possible, and to that end, I typically protect sheets. There is no intent to specifically hide or protect any proprietary method or short change the hobby here - from a formulaic standpoint, nothing is "invented" in any way - the formulas are freely found in any engineering fluid mechanics textbook or by the poster a few replies up. This is just meant to be a tool that is a time saver from having to look up constants and manually plug numbers into a standard formula. Feel free to use the tool or the formula - the results are roughly the same.

 

[944play]

In OpenOffice, just uncheck Tools>Protect Document>Sheet...

 

[jgourd]

In OpenOffice, just uncheck Tools>Protect Document>Sheet...

The new OpenOffice won't unprotect Excel by default anymore; you still need the password. When I do my spreadsheets, I just put a blank password (it achieves the OP's intended result--removing potentially confusing stuff or "clutter"--without requiring an actual password to unprotect them if I want to--thereby having the choice to do so without being restricted by the designer). But I found a workaround. Save the Excel file as OpenOffice calc. Save back as Excel and it gives you the option to strip the password protection. Then unprotecting works just fine without a password. And I got the formulas. And now any password protected Excel spreadsheet can be easily "broken."

 

[jgourd]

Much of the instruction I have had and feedback received over time pertaining to application design in spreadsheets is to make the user interface as clean and error proof as possible, and to that end, I typically protect sheets. There is no intent to specifically hide or protect any proprietary method or short change the hobby here - from a formulaic standpoint, nothing is "invented" in any way - the formulas are freely found in any engineering fluid mechanics textbook or by the poster a few replies up. This is just meant to be a tool that is a time saver from having to look up constants and manually plug numbers into a standard formula. Feel free to use the tool or the formula - the results are roughly the same.

I understand your point. But some of us who have an insatiable desire to constantly learn about our hobby (even the mathy stuff) want to see how you used those equations. We enjoy leveraging others' work to skip the work of correlating formulae (we want to see how someone else did it). The same goes the other way in that we also work through math and formulae to facilitate some sort of calculation for others.

 

[motobrewer]

i just want to say, brian1's formula is more accurate than the spreadsheet, at least for me.

i have a wheat beer on tap. 37F, 20psi for about 3.4 volumes. 3/16" line, 5" shank, 24" height difference.

your spreadsheet gives me 93 inches, about 7.75 feet. I have 10' on there right now, and I have to turn the reg down to 8psi to get a decent pour. pouring at 20psi on 10' gives me nothing but foam. 7.75 feet would be useless.

brian1's formula gives 16 feet, which, while I haven't tried that yet (waiting on beer line...) seems much more reasonable...