Need major help with my seltzer setup

[LitBrewing]

Ok I have read every thread, watched every youtube video I could find. I made a nice mix of vodka and water and kegged it, chilled it and force carbonated it and let it sit at about 30psi. After letting it rest an hour or so cleared the head space and lowered the psi to about 15, hooked it to a picnic tap. When it comes out it is 'gurgling' out, and it looks like there is 'air' inside the line as it comes out of the keg.

I have spent nearly 4-5 hours troubleshooting this and can't figure it out plus hours and hours watching videos and reading forums. This should literally be the easiest thing, but it's turned out to be the most difficult.

* I re-lubed up the dip tube, poppit and keg post
* Tried a different keg post
* Tried a different ball lock attachment on the end of the hose.
* Tried a 6 foot hose, and a 50 foot hose, and a 15 foot hose, all pretty much same problem
* Tried a completely different keg with just tap water ( chilled, force carbed, etc )

I'm at my wits end a bit here, and not exactly sure where to even begin to try and fix this because I feel like i've replaced/tried every point of failure I can think of.

If anyone has ideas of things to try, i'm all ears would love to get this resolved it's driving me crazy.

 

[BongoYodeler]

I had the exact same issue on a kegged beer a few months ago. After digging around it turned out to be the beer out dip-tube gasket. Hitting it with lube didn't fix it but replacing it did. Upon examining it I could see it had a tear in it almost all the way through.

 

[LitBrewing]

Yeah I replaced the dip tube gasket, even though it didn't look damaged at all. Also tried a different dip tube, and lubed both.

 

[Bobby_M]

Two possible issues here.
1. The carb level of seltzer is a matter of opinion, but I like it a little spicy at 30-40psi. If you really did get it carbed all the way to 30psi, you have to keep that pressure on it for serving also. When you drop the headspace pressure, the CO2 is just a mosquito fart away from breaking out of solution. When you open the faucet, you get an additional pressure drop in the line and that's where all the bubbles are coming from.

2. There is a possibility of gas making it into the liquid path. It can get through the diptube oring or in very rare cases through a pinhole in the diptube itself. Both of these situations can be ruled out by laying the keg on its side so that the liquid out post is closest to the floor. This covers both possible leak locations in liquid.

 

[LitBrewing]

Thanks Bobby that gives me some good info. Ok so I can see why you want to carb over time vs force carb unless you know for sure how carbonated it is.

That makes sense to me that the serving PSI need to be balanced with the carbonation level.

Sounds like I should go with like a 35 foot line and just slow carb it at 35ish psi over a few days?

 

[Bobby_M]

You can set it to 35psi and just roll the keg around for a while to speed carbonation. It will never overcarb if you don't set the pressure any higher than that.

 

[LitBrewing]

Ok so i got the evabarrier and all the connectors finally. Force carb'd the water by shaking for 3m at about 50 psi. Let it rest for an hour or two and tested. Regulator set to 35 for serving, and it's coming out nice and sparkly which is great but there is still 'sputtering' going on as it comes out. Maybe this is normal? I tried a different keg post and popitt, lubed them up, and it looks the same. I serve beer out of all these kegs all the time without issue so i'm suspecting it's normal with this level of carbonation or it's 'fallling out' which I really don't know how to fix or even if it its a fixable issue.

Here's the video of the 'sputtering' any help appreciated:

*** Link should work now if it wasn't before