Seriously bummed today. I tapped the rebrew keg for one of my NHC final round entries last night. Tastes great. I’m thinking it’s better than my 1st round batch. Fast forward 12 hrs. I come down to the garage this morning to do some bottling, and there’s a puddle on the floor under the kegerator. The ball lock disconnect was leaking on the out post, and the keg drained overnight. It’s empty.
Not even sure if its worth trying to scramble another rebrew at this point. It’s a 20A so I don’t have time to age it on fruit in the secondary anymore…
Wow, I’m sorry for your loss… of beer. I almost suffered a similar fate recently, although it had nothing to do with beer for a comp, especially the NHC!
I never got around to posting about it, but a week ago before tapping a helles that had finished lagering, I swapped out one of my kegerator liquid lines for a longer one (doubled the length to 10 ft), and same time added a spare, clean ball lock liquid side QD (black) before tapping the keg. I hooked up the keg, looked at the QD and thought that the little bit of liquid on top of it was what I just spritzed from my star san squirt bottle.
I went and mowed the lawn, and two hours later came back and decided to peek in there again, just because. I found that beer had been leaking out the QD and collecting on the bottom of my kegerator.
The problem was that when cleaning the spare QD weeks before, I had taken it apart, and then put it back together loosely so it would dry out better. So the QD cap was on but not tightened down with a screw driver.
I only lost about 20 oz beer from the keg, and after tightening the loose cap on the QD just unhooked and removed the several kegs from my kegerator, cleaned out the spilled beer, and then replaced/reattached all kegs.
So my lesson learned is DON’T FORGET to check/tighten my QDs anytime I attach a spare one, before applying gas or beer.
That tops any leaking keg problems I have encountered, and I have had several heartbreaks on this front from leaking kegs. Now I check just about everything - repeatedly (OCD-like at this point). Leaks can happen despite all best efforts. I feel your pain - almost, but not quite as much as you do.
I stopped a near leak out about a month ago. Happened to notice a slight leak out of the nut that snugs on one of my QDs. I tightened it and all of them after it. I don’t know when I’d even checked last.
Thanks everyone. I did throw a small batch rebrew of the base beer together just in case I can time it. Not setting any high expectations though.
Thankfully I had closed the gas line or I would have blown out my gas tank too. Since there was only a partial keg, the head pressure was sufficient to push it all out. If it had been a full keg, I probably would have found some remaining. The leak came from connection between the ball lock post and disconnect, not the MFL. It moved with the black disconnect, so it wasn’t the o-ring. By the looks of it, the inside of the quick disconnect got damaged and it wouldn’t seal properly. A slow, but critical leak.
