I’m new to kegging so I am enjoying many glasses of delicious foam at the moment - however I think from some of my reading of the articles on AHA that I should solve that pretty soon.
The one question I am not sure of is …
Once I have force carbonated and my keg is at pressure, is there enough pressure in the keg to then dispense the beer from at a future location. For example, I have seen breweries offering kegs delivered to parties etc where the keg is just tossed into ice and served from, but doesn’t this approach require a CO2 tank to providing the dispensing pressure ?
The kegging article on AHA tends to suggest that a CO2 tank is always hooked up for dispensing ?
You always need to attach a CO2 source to serve beer. You can serve a few glasses without being hooked up to CO2 but after that there won’t be enough pressure to push out the beer.
+1 to what Tommy said. Also, you say your beer is foamy - how did you carb it? How long is your serving line? What type of beer are you serving? If a dry hopped beer, hop particles have a way of clogging dip tubes and/or poppet valves, causing a foamy pour. I’m betting on too short a serving line.
Thanks for the reply Jon - I’m pretty comfortable I will solve my foaming problems with some experimentation. But my dispensing line is about 4 feet long, I think its 1/4 inch poly. I sat it for 2 days on about 12 psi but was getting foaming I tried burping the keg and then lowering the P to say 5 psi and got mostly flat beer. I also read in “Brew Like a Pro” that its worth trying turning up the P and dispensing full throttle (squeeze trigger completely) so I tried that at 15 and got one perfect pour and then after that pouring deteriorated again to foam.
So I thought I would try some experiments over the weekend again. I don’t feel I have any hop residue or blockage problems. One issue probably is that my old fridge is working too well it is currently at 2 deg C (35.6 F) so I could easily turn that back to say 4 degrees and still get good serving temp and carb.
However all thoughts are welcome. Good part is I have to keep drinking every experiment I dispense. Cheers
1/4" ID line will have to be longer than 4 feet when serving at 10-12 PSI. Most people use 3/16" ID line and 5-10’ is a common length. Longer lengths add resistance and reduce foam.
If your beer is flat when serving at 5 PSI it probably needs to carbonate longer. It takes 1-2 weeks at 10-12 PSI to carb if you don’t use acceleration methods, which I don’t recommend.
A couple thoughts - 2 days @ 12 psi won’t carb your beer properly. A really easy way to get good carbonation AND a good pour is to use this temp/pressure chart to get to around 2.5 volumes of CO2 (in the green range)for normal beers. Then buy 10 feet of 3/16" ID beer line and cut it down in 6 inch increments until you get the pour you want at your carbonation pressure. Being able to get a good pour at your carbonation pressure is key to good draft beer that maintains proper carbonation. Good luck regardless!
Great thanks to everyone for their replies - much appreciated. I’ll get a longer length and check the diameter and try that. It’s just such a relief to be able to get away from bottling and the experimenting is fun anyway. Thanks again.