TL;DR: Use a long faucet shank as a heat sink to prevent foamy first pours when the kegerator is stored in a warm environment.
For the past 4 years, I've kept my keezer in the garage due to limited space inside. Ever since, I've been struggling with foamy beer. It's not the usual culprits: my temps are fine, lines are balanced, and equipment is turbulence-free. The problem is simply that I live in Texas, and my garage is 85°F+ for much of the year. The ambient heat warms my Nukataps so that they flash-foam the first few ounces of beer. Once the taps cool, the beer flows perfectly, but wasting whole ounces of beer every pour felt unjustifiably wasteful, and drinking foam? Simply barbarous. I resigned myself to using party faucets or a mini tap setup. I could pour foamless beer, but I had to open my keezer lid to do so. Lame!
I agonized over what to do for a long time until I came across an 8" long faucet shank at my local homebrew store. I thought, "Who would even need this?" before I realized that it just might be the solution to my problem. I bought it, put it in my keezer, and lo and behold, my foam problems disappeared. Now, even at the height of summer in Texas, my pours have only a slight head of foam instead of half a glass-full, even when my taps haven't been touched in days.
I don't know exactly why this works...I suspect it has something to do with the faucet shank acting as a heat sink for the thermal mass of the tap itself. I also suspect that a not-so-long shank would have done the job—I was previously using short 3-inch shanks which only protruded from the keezer collar by about an inch, so perhaps something in the 4-6" range would work just as well.
Hopefully, this helps someone else out there with a kegerator/keezer in a warm environment!
For the past 4 years, I've kept my keezer in the garage due to limited space inside. Ever since, I've been struggling with foamy beer. It's not the usual culprits: my temps are fine, lines are balanced, and equipment is turbulence-free. The problem is simply that I live in Texas, and my garage is 85°F+ for much of the year. The ambient heat warms my Nukataps so that they flash-foam the first few ounces of beer. Once the taps cool, the beer flows perfectly, but wasting whole ounces of beer every pour felt unjustifiably wasteful, and drinking foam? Simply barbarous. I resigned myself to using party faucets or a mini tap setup. I could pour foamless beer, but I had to open my keezer lid to do so. Lame!
I agonized over what to do for a long time until I came across an 8" long faucet shank at my local homebrew store. I thought, "Who would even need this?" before I realized that it just might be the solution to my problem. I bought it, put it in my keezer, and lo and behold, my foam problems disappeared. Now, even at the height of summer in Texas, my pours have only a slight head of foam instead of half a glass-full, even when my taps haven't been touched in days.
I don't know exactly why this works...I suspect it has something to do with the faucet shank acting as a heat sink for the thermal mass of the tap itself. I also suspect that a not-so-long shank would have done the job—I was previously using short 3-inch shanks which only protruded from the keezer collar by about an inch, so perhaps something in the 4-6" range would work just as well.
Hopefully, this helps someone else out there with a kegerator/keezer in a warm environment!
