Berube05734
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2022
- Messages
- 36
- Reaction score
- 18
Good Morning, All,
First time posting.
I've been brewing (all grain) for the last year and have finally graduated to kegging my beer. I finally got tired of seeing my hard work quickly turn as brown as the bottle it's sitting in - as well as that dreaded wet cardboard flavor after just 3 weeks. I bought a couple of corny kegs and a mini-fridge which I converted into a kegerator.
So, I'm struggling with obtaining full carbonation in the beer. I'm ending up with mile high foam on top, but after the first sip (which tastes/feels carbonated), the beer starts to quickly go flat. I've spent weeks scouring sites/forums for tips and methods of carbing the beer, but I'm still doing something wrong or missing a step.
I attempted a closed transfer system - star san'd the keg, purged the sanitizer from the keg...stopped purging when I got nothing but air and residual bubbles coming out the beer line. Then I used my CO to push the beer from the fermenter into the keg (this, I was absolutely tickled about as it worked so slick). I set the CO pressure to 40 and let it sit for a couple of days and then backed it down to 12.5 and let it sit for a week. Right up to the last glass, I continued to get 4" of foam and flat beer after the first couple of sips.
How do I move that CO that's creating all that foam into the beer itself? The only thing that I haven't tried is using a longer beer line. My LHBS cut me 4' and said I'd be fine. However, a lot of forums contradict this and if I use some of the formulas online to calculate the length of the beer line I should use, my calculations arrive at 10'.
How does the length of the beer line affect carbonation in the beer...that, I'm not understanding...
Secondly, although I was ecstatic to see that the color remained true throughout the entire time, a very lovely peachy hazy color,...as I got towards the bottom of the keg I started to detect a bit of cardboard. Is it possible to still have a layer of oxygen in the keg while being fully pressurized? If so, is there an obvious way to know when all oxygen has been purged from the keg?
Thanks,
Pam
First time posting.
I've been brewing (all grain) for the last year and have finally graduated to kegging my beer. I finally got tired of seeing my hard work quickly turn as brown as the bottle it's sitting in - as well as that dreaded wet cardboard flavor after just 3 weeks. I bought a couple of corny kegs and a mini-fridge which I converted into a kegerator.
So, I'm struggling with obtaining full carbonation in the beer. I'm ending up with mile high foam on top, but after the first sip (which tastes/feels carbonated), the beer starts to quickly go flat. I've spent weeks scouring sites/forums for tips and methods of carbing the beer, but I'm still doing something wrong or missing a step.
I attempted a closed transfer system - star san'd the keg, purged the sanitizer from the keg...stopped purging when I got nothing but air and residual bubbles coming out the beer line. Then I used my CO to push the beer from the fermenter into the keg (this, I was absolutely tickled about as it worked so slick). I set the CO pressure to 40 and let it sit for a couple of days and then backed it down to 12.5 and let it sit for a week. Right up to the last glass, I continued to get 4" of foam and flat beer after the first couple of sips.
How do I move that CO that's creating all that foam into the beer itself? The only thing that I haven't tried is using a longer beer line. My LHBS cut me 4' and said I'd be fine. However, a lot of forums contradict this and if I use some of the formulas online to calculate the length of the beer line I should use, my calculations arrive at 10'.
How does the length of the beer line affect carbonation in the beer...that, I'm not understanding...
Secondly, although I was ecstatic to see that the color remained true throughout the entire time, a very lovely peachy hazy color,...as I got towards the bottom of the keg I started to detect a bit of cardboard. Is it possible to still have a layer of oxygen in the keg while being fully pressurized? If so, is there an obvious way to know when all oxygen has been purged from the keg?
Thanks,
Pam