Foamy First 4oz from Tap, Need Help!

[jbaysurfer]

^BLC is marketed specifically for kegerator owners, and to my understaning it's a much more concentrated form of PBW. It's expensive too and comes in a liquid form. It IS magical at dissolving stubborn deposits and beer stone...but I just use PBW nowadays.

 

[Johnnyboy1012]

I've used pbw also but I'm cautious with the amount of rinsing that u have to do after you use it with water then an acid based substance like star san. I've heard BLC is amazing at cleaning the lines so I figured I'd give it a try. I just ordered 35 feet of 3/16 beer line, and 2 perlik faucets.

 

[Brewerforlife]

BLC is poatasium hydroxide, a pretty strong caustic. PBW is mainly sodium meta-silicate, pretty much the same as oxi-clean.

 

[Johnnyboy1012]

Funny, I was going to answer your question intuitively and I was going to say that 9PSI is where you should be at 34F. Then I checked JuanMoore's chart and I guess all these years some of this stuff has started to stick ;-)

For you line length, you can coil the lines about the diameter of a corny (if you have a few inches at the tops of the kegs as I do) and put them on top of the kegs. For your c02, take the time to route the tubes correctly and don't use any extra line to conserve space.

You could do all this and a tower cooler and still have the same problem, if that's the case, you're just overcarbed in your keg or have a faulty liquid out tap, post, or Oring on the diptube. Don't give up though. It can be solved. If you have to vent c02 for a couple days to relieve an overpressured keg, do it and leave the gas off. You can overshoot and undercarb it, but if that happens, just reconnect the gas at 9PSI and wait patiently. After awhile you'll start to get a feel for how to work your kegs. The carb levels change sometimes as the keg empties (at least this is my experience, YMMV)..but you'll get it wired. Cheers!

I was thinking about this post where u mention that carb levels change as the keg empties. Do you think this is because temperature at the bottom of the fridge is 2-4 degrees colder then at the top of the fridge? So as the keg empties and the level of the beer in the keg gets lower, the temperature of the beer can drop 2-4 degrees causing slight over carbination. I've had this happen before as well, I had to degas my last 1/4 of a keg because it mysteriously got over carbonated but now I think I figured out why that happened. What do you think?

 

[jbaysurfer]

I was thinking about this post where u mention that carb levels change as the keg empties. Do you think this is because temperature at the bottom of the fridge is 2-4 degrees colder then at the top of the fridge? So as the keg empties and the level of the beer in the keg gets lower, the temperature of the beer can drop 2-4 degrees causing slight over carbination. I've had this happen before as well, I had to degas my last 1/4 of a keg because it mysteriously got over carbonated but now I think I figured out why that happened. What do you think?

I think it's because temperatures over time aren't 100% stable, and over time a 1PSI difference in actual pressure vs. theoretical pressure (what the table says it should be) gets magnified and will result in either under or over-carbed beer. Which kind of dovetails with your scenario of temperature differences at the top vs. bottom of the fridge. The longer you have a keg on tap the more problematic this becomes.

I don't want to discourage you, but think you said something earlier about getting it to work perfectly every time, but in all honesty, in my 20 years of owning kegerators, I'm still working on it. I think of it more as dance I do with each keg over time....it's a hobby in and of itself.

Regarding your question on rinsing PBW, it's known as a "quick rinse" cleaner. So a quick rinse in the same temp as the PBW solution you ran through the line should suffice. I probably use 1G of PBW, 1G of hot water, and 1G of sanitizer. This is my regular routine. I try to do it every 2 kegs or so, and whenever I have multiple kegs swapping out at once. I also try to recycle all the cleaning chemicals for keg cleaning as well.