I just got the equipment to put a hand faucet on my first beer in around 16 years. I just got back to brewing, so I had to buy a lot of things, and the kegging and dispensing stuff is arriving after everything else.
After kegging, this beer was at 32 psi for several days in the 35-40-degree range. I was waiting for parts so I could start pouring. I failed to reduce the pressure.
I don’t have my keezer set up with faucets yet, so I stuck about 3 feet of EVAbarrier and a hand faucet on the keg and sampled the beer. Tons of foam, but when the head goes down to where you can drink it, it seems like it lacks carbonation.
So where do I go from here? Do I just turn it down to 12 psi and wait?
It’s over carbonated. Take it out of the fridge, pull the tab and wait a day. Keep pulling the tab every few hours. More CO2 will be coming out of solution.
If you had a way to measure temp and head pressure at equilibrium you could use one of the CO2 pressure charts and get the beer down to 2.5 volumes of CO2 - ie. find the right pressure for your room temperature. If you don’t have that I would keep pulling the tab for 2-3 days then put it back in the fridge at 12 psi. If it is still over carbonated then pull it out and repeat the decarb process above.
In the future - You should not leave at 30PSI more than about 24 hours.
PS. I find when beer is over carbonated it looses all the carbonation as foam when you pour it. At least that’s what it tastes like to me.
I had this type of problem with every beer I made last Fall. I don’t force carb, I use corn sugar to carbonate my kegs. I apparently picked up an unwanted yeast in my equipment that just kept working while the kegs sat in storage waiting to be used. Everything got scrubbed and sanitized with a different product before brewing started again this fall.
The advice above is the only way to deal with the problem. It takes time but it will get the foam under control.
I knew better than to do this, but things just slipped my mind. Now I’ve learned that my ancient brass manifold had a valve that was shot, so CO2 was wandering off. I put the whole business in the pool, and up came the bubbles.
I ordered a new manifold because it looks like upgrading the brass one to Duotight would be expensive and unproductive, and I feel like getting at least one new regulator. I have one that works, one I had to order new gauges for, and a third one that went swimming when my old keezer died and beer blew out of a hot keg. I have to have both beer gas and CO2 in order to have any kind of quality of life.
It looks like all three of my old regulators were beer-gas-capable. I have been trying to find out why anyone would buy a regulator that only works with CO2. Money, I guess.
