Can't Solve Beer Foam Issue

[catman]

I'm new to kegging and am having a foaming issue. Here's the details:

• I have two 5-gallon kegs and one 1.75-gallon keg. The two 5-gallon kegs are hooked up to about 6 feet of 3/16" ID AccuFlex BevSeal line, and give me no problems at all.
• The 1.75 gallon keg was originally hooked up to a line of the same length, but came outs pure foam and flat at about 12PSI. I tried reducing the pressure to something like 9 PSI and lengthened the line to 19 feet, but it didn't help at all. When I turn the pressure down, the beer still comes out foamy, but somewhat more carbonated.
• The only guess I have as to what's going on is this: I carbonated the beer in the 1.75-gallon keg by setting the pressure to about 35PSI overnight and then reducing to serving pressure. Could it be that I over carbonated the beer, and by reducing the pressure, the beer is re-equilibriating by releasing CO2 from solution into the keg, which means that the actual pressure in the keg is greater than the 9PSI I have the regulator set at?
• Everything is at 38 degrees F.

Thanks so much for the help.

 

[Mtrhdltd]

Have you disassembled and cleaned your faucet and disconnect and liquid post on the offending keg? If all other factors are the same as the nice pouring keg I would start there, gunk or hops particles can cause foam.

 

[Harleybrew32]

swap your liquid line to a different keg and see if it still pours foam.
I had one liquid quick connect have a piece of plastic blocking the beer from coming out and it poured foam all the time.
cheers

 

[catman]

swap your liquid line to a different keg and see if it still pours foam.
I had one liquid quick connect have a piece of plastic blocking the beer from coming out and it poured foam all the time.
cheers

Thanks. I switched the lines between the kegs and the flow is fine coming from the other keg. So it's not the faucet, disconnect, or shank. I guess that leaves the post on the keg, but I'm loathe to disassemble the keg while its full. Is that something I should be worried about, or should I just go for it?

 

[camonick]

Could be a damaged o-ring on the liquid dip tube on the keg that’s giving you problems. Vent keg, remove liquid post and dip tube, replace o-ring and lubricate, sanitize, reassemble and see if that makes a difference.
Edit: if there is still a foaming problem, it could very well be over carbonated.

 

[Vale71]

Smaller kegs carbonate faster than larger one so overcarbonation in the smaller keg is certainly possible. To determine this you should get a manometer mounted on a quick disconnect to check for equilibrium pressure in the keg. The manometer on most regulators won't do as they usually have built-in check valves that won't let CO2 flow back from the keg which means the manometer won't measure the actual headspace pressure in the keg.

 

[Brian66]

I had a similar option with my 2.5 gallon kegs. The thing I wasn't doing is when lowering the pressure I was supposed to shut off CO2, release head pressure from the keg and from the gas tube connection. Once I started doing that it was much better.

 

[catman]

I had a similar option with my 2.5 gallon kegs. The thing I wasn't doing is when lowering the pressure I was supposed to shut off CO2, release head pressure from the keg and from the gas tube connection. Once I started doing that it was much better.

I was doing this, so that's not the problem in this case, but thanks for confirming that this was the right thing to do.

It looks like the problem was over carbonation. I vented the keg last night and left it without any new CO2 flowing in until this morning, when I vented it again and returned it to normal serving pressure. After letting it sit for a few hours until it became socially acceptable to pour a beer, I finally did, and it came out perfectly.

So in the future, I'll need to be careful not to overdo the burst carbonation on this small keg.

Thanks all for the help!

 

[mattdee1]

Yes, the burst carb method is tempting because it short-cuts the waiting, but if you're not careful it's really easy to screw it up and get too much gas into the beer. It's always better to undershoot a bit on the burst carb because the carbonation will creep up over time to the target zone once you move the keg to the tap and it sits for a while under serving pressure.

I don't have much overcarbing anymore but the last few times I've had it happen, I've taken the keg out of the fridge/freezer and let it sit at room temp with no gas line attached, venting it a few imes per day over the course of a few days. Moving kegs around definitely sucks because you stir up sediment, but I find that allowing the keg to warm up a bit helps to squeeze some of the excess CO2 out of solution so you can vent the excess CO2 more quickly and be back on your way.