It's 2020.. Electronic Valves into beer lines workable yet ?

[CliffRT]

I've been Googling a lot and reading up multiple discussions on Reddit and on HBT for the past 6 hours about electronic valves into beer lines.

There were a lot of posts from all the way back from 2012, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Most of it ended on cliffhangers, and a lot of them reported foamy beers.

In most cases, they were using a solenoid with a smaller diameter than their lines and it resulted in foamy beer especially due to the flow sensor.
I'm about to try the opposite of that and see how that works. I'm currently working on a self project for a DIY automated beer dispenser.
day_trippr has given me golden beginner tips and I've taken them to reduce my line diameters.

Since solenoid valves don't seem to work, anyone here has a better idea or workaround to control the flow of beer by means of electronically ?

Thanks.

 

[matt_m]

It’s definitely possible. I’ve been to a tap room that gave you a card on the way in and you paid by the ounce at a few dozen self-serve taps. You had to put your card on a reader to enable flow to the tap. Obviously that was a commercial system.

 

[day_trippr]

I wouldn't state "solenoid valves don't seem to work". The solenoid control concept goes back at least as far as the Kegbot era and no doubt well prior. The issues aren't dissimilar from inserting flow meters wrt induced turbulence. Better meters well-matched to the tubing will perform better; same applies to solenoids.

I have meters but no solenoids and get great pours. Every time solenoids come up I wonder what would happen if I stuck one in the beer line, and I do have a pair of 1/4" ID solenoid valves doing duty on my RO system. But as I don't have the need for locking down my keezer it'd strictly be an experiment, and that puts it deeeep in my "things to do" queue

Cheers!