I'm having a difficult time with serving.

[greencoat]

Alright, I recently starting kegging and have had a lot trouble with pouring good pints. In my current set-up, I have 10 feet of tubing on my beers (~12 psi) and 20 feet of tubing on my soda (~20 psi) all being stored at 40*f, using party taps. I'm getting nothing but foam on most of my pours and could really use some expertise. The soda line has air bubbles in it as well, making it very difficult to serve - I'd like to get rid of that little issue. Cheers!

 

[IrregularPulse]

How are you carbing? set and forget or burst or..?

 

[Golddiggie]

Tubing ID?

 

[greencoat]

Set and forget. I'll put whatever I'm carbing on gas for a week, then pull off the gas and carb something else (I don't have a manifold yet.) For what it's worth, they're all 5 gallon ball locks, except my soda keg is a converted pin lock.

 

[greencoat]

Tubing ID?

I'm not sure, I'll report back when I get home.

 

[pjj2ba]

Is it official thick walled beer line? The stuff from the hardware stores is thinner walled and will expand a little under pressure and allow some CO2 to come out of solution, resulting in foaming when pouring

 

[JohnnyO]

I had a similar problem when I first started. Turned out to be a bad diaphragm in my regulator. My display read 10psi, but in reality, it was unrestricted CO2. I got all foam like a shotgun out of there.

They sell a kit for about $10 to fix the diaphragm if that's what your issue turns out to be.

 

[greencoat]

Well, the tubing was bought from my LBHS who I've always been able to count on. Here are a few pictures...

Here's the soda line. See all the air gaps in there?? It's not currently on gas and that's happening...

I haven't been kegging all that long, so it could be some stupid noob mistake. Ideas??

Cheers!

 

[ChaosBrew]

looks like it says 3/8 ID you want 3/16 ID

 

[MBasile]

looks like it says 3/8 ID you want 3/16 ID

MY LHBS did the same thing. I asked them "Isn't it usually 3/16"?" but they said No. I ordered 50' of 3/16" ID from MicroMatic after that.

 

[samc]

Someone needs a new LHBS or have a long talk with whoever sold them that line. You can even see how oddly the hose is pinched down on the cobra tap. You want to have to struggle to get the tubing to fit over the barbs.

+1 3/16th

 

[Zen_Brew]

Agreed. Line should be 3/16"

3/8" line is much less restrictive than 3/16" and is not creating the correct resistance to flow to balance the pressure of the co2 setting. 3/8 would only normally be used for very long runs where 3/16 would cause too much restriction for the beer to move through the long hose length at the correct psi.

Also, not certain if you normally store your line the way shown in the pics, or if it's just cuz of the trouble shooting. Ideally you should coil the line up and place it on top of the keg. If you put it on the floor of the freezer you can create pressure differentials in the line. As the beer comes out of the keg, gravity helps it flow faster down to the floor, then it has to move up the line to reach the tap which is working against gravity. You can get some extra foaming where the line switches from a downhill drop to an uphill climb.

Your primary issue here is your line diameter though. Kinda sucks, but line is a fairly cheap fix. Maybe your LHBS will take the line back they erroneously recommended to you.