Troubleshooting Foam from Perlick 575SS

[BadNewsBrewery]

I have 3 Perlick 575SS faucets (the 'fancy' ones with the creamer feature).

On one specific faucet, I get foam for the first second or two, every pour. This isn't the "warm beer" foam you sometimes get, because it'll do it on every pint, even if I pour 3 or 4 back to back. Interestingly enough, it also won't allow me to push back against the handle to get the creamer feature to work.

I fully disassembled all 3 faucets after pushing a warm water / PBW mix through all of them. Cleaned all the parts and reassembled - no change. Thinking that there was a chance that maybe I happened to put the exact parts back into the faucet as I had taken out, I swapped the internals with a faucet that I confirmed worked fine (no foam, creamer worked great). The one that used to work kept working, despite the different internals. The one that wasn't working didn't start working, despite having internals from a working tap.

Conclusion: Something with the housing of the faucet is screwy.

The problem - the housing is a pretty simple piece of metal with an O-Ring in it. Doesn't seem like there's something to break (the faucet USED to work as designed).

Any thoughts on what to look at for troubleshooting? Doesn't seem like the problem should be with the faucet and not the internals. I've checked the hosing and there aren't any kinks or anything wacky like that, at least not that I can see.

-Kevin

 

[CarbonTom]

I have the exact same problem with one of my 2 575s. I kept thinking I was warm or overcarbed. I ran starsan (my lazy cleaning effort) through both regular and creamer pours for 30 sec or so. I think its fixed, but I will know for sure when the beer on that line is carbed in a week Subbed for solution

 

[day_trippr]

Make sure you're installing the bearing cap (item 6A for a 575) in the right orientation.
The open end of the cut-out should be towards the spout end of the body.
[edit] Also, I expect 5A has to be installed in the right rotation - that creamer valve only opens in one direction.

If you had that the right way all along the only thing that can keep the "creamer" valve (at the end of item 5A) from operating is if it's gunked up and basically seized.

As for the foam at the beginning of every pour, I'd be interested in reading if you actually moved the balky faucet to another line and moved one of the two "known good" faucets to the original shank...

Cheers!

 

[gnef]

Also try a different disconnect and keg to eliminate those as possiblities. Best of luck!

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Looks like it's back to the scientific method - eliminate all the possible variables. I could see it being something on the line itself - the connection to the keg, the flow meter, the shank... Hell, even something with the keg. I'll start swapping out components 1 at a time from the other 2 known good pouring kegs and see what causes it. I'll report back - planning to do it Sunday.
-Kevin

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

Swapped the hoses between 2 kegs and that was the 90% solution. The beer that used to pour foamy from tap 3 now pours foamy from tap 1, and the beer that poured clear from Tap 1 poured clear from Tap 3. All the beers are kept at the same PSI and temperature, so it's possible that I'm outside the proper carbonation range for the foamy one (it's an American Pale Ale) but not sure why it'd be THAT extreme. Once the keg is kicked, I'll check all the internals and fittings, there may be something in the pickup tube or the ball lock post that's causing issue.

The perlick creamer feature didn't suddenly start working on the one faucet that's screwy, so I'm going to have to take it apart and clean it more thoroughly than I did before to find out what the issue is, possible swap the faucet to a new shank to see if that causes anything.

Not much of an overwhelming solution or update, but I said I'd report back so that's what I'm doing.
-Kevin