Hooked up my freshly filled 20lb CO2 to the Tap-Rite regulator as a kegged homebrew needed a push to pour.
Noticed, the Tap-Rite gauge barely showing the needle in the green area.
Is this normal, needle barely in the green area, for a freshly filled CO2 tank?
It’s been several years since I needed a CO2 refill, but I believe the needed was about 1/2 way in the green area on the gauge.
Was I shorted?
CO2 pressure varies with temperature so if you keep it inside your Kegerator/Keezer it will usually never make the green zone. Once it’s at a stable temperature, the gauge will stay very close to the same until all of the liquid CO2 is gone. I keep my Keezer at ~38 F and the gauge stays about half-way between the green and red zones.
CO2 tank is at basement temps. In prior fills I don’t recall the needle barely being in the green zone.
It’s normal. Your basement is probably a little colder than usual.
If I’m not mistaken, CO2 bottles are filled by weight, not by pressure. Also, the gauge you’re using may be off.
Only if they filled it with less weight. The place I go, fills bottles at a fixed cost, not per lb. I trust them to read the scale correctly.
A way to tell if you got gypped: Take your bathroom scale and see what the bottle weights. It should be ~20 lb + the tare weight of the bottle and valve (without the gauge attached). Of course your scale could be wrong but it should be in the same zip code.
The head pressure in the bottle is constant (for constant temperature) as long as there is any liquid CO2 in the bottle. The variation on the gauge is only due to temperature change until there is no liquid. Then you see a rapid drop in pressure as you use up the last remnants of gas.
Because of this, you can’t tell if you were sold too little or too much CO2 from the gauge on the bottle.
Brewbama is correct. You can weigh the bottle. The empty weight (tare weight) is written on the bottle.