Troubleshooting foamy beer

[Kristoffer Pettersson]

Hi all
After spending three years renovating our vacation home I have finally started to poor some beer from my DIY “keg system”.
As the subject says I experience issues with foam.
My setup is a two faucet tower in the kitchen with a fridge in the basement below, 11ft elevation. I’m using 3/8” OD (approximately 1/4” ID) PE tubing For the beer and I’m circulating water in the same type of tubing. The lines, beer and water, are 32ft with the excess coiled up in the fridge. The circulation ends just below the countertop.
The “trunk line” is wrapped in 1/2” foam insulation used for copper pipes. I measured the temperature on the outside of the beer line where the circulation ends to 55F, the fridge is set to 41F.

My guess is that my issue is mostly due to temperature and not excessive pressure (I used various sources for balancing the beer lines).

I think my next step would be to change to 1/4” or 5/16” tubing for the beer and run that inside a 1/2” tube with water circulation.

Before I start tearing it down and rebuilding I would appreciate any thoughts or experiences that you could share.

 

[duncan.brown]

What’s the temperature of the water in the cooling lines?

 

[camonick]

My guess is that my issue is mostly due to temperature and not excessive pressure (I used various sources for balancing the beer lines).

What kind of gas and what pressure do you have applied to your kegs?

 

[camonick]

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you have multiple problems.
1– Your beer temperature is too warm at the faucet causing CO2 to come out of solution.
2– I’m just guessing here, but your kegs might be over carbonated if using 100% CO2 above 13-14 psi at your setting of 41°, which will compound problem #1.

 

[Genuine]

Foam was my boss' problem as well. We found out his Kegerator only got down to 41 so by the time it was coming out of the tap, the beer was around 42-43 degrees...which will make co2 break out of the beer.

 

[Kristoffer Pettersson]

Hi

I have “upgraded”my cooling system to include a coil of 50’ of 3/8” copper line strapped against the back plate in my fridge, switched to a tower that allows the cooling lines to “end” just an inch below the faucets and substituted the 3/8” beer lines for 24’ of 1/4” PE tubing.
The cooling lines are very cold now and no foam!
Next upgrade will be a temp sensor in the tower and a STC-1000 to control the cooling. At the moment I’m using a submersible DC pump 6-24v powered by an old 12v adapter.

 

[Kristoffer Pettersson]

Small update, I took some measurements this morning(system has stabilized after yesterday’s installation).
Fridge, ambient temperature is 41 F
Cooling water is 37.5 F
Trunk line, just below counter top, is 45 F
Tower is 55F