Glasses of Foam

[Ged]

Guys

This is driving me nuts.. I cant seem to get a consistent delivery from my keggin setup.. Have three kegs running and each keg is giving me 3/4 pint of dense foam... Have played around with the PSI etc but can't seem to get a working system...Temp inside chest freezer is 7 to 8 deg c. Length of line between keg and picnic tap is approx 9 feet ( sits inside chest freezer so same temp) Line is from craftbrewer and is OD 8mm/ ID 6mm. Pressure around 0.5 bar and tried upto 0.75 bar. Picnic tap fully open and starts a fast pour then white foam pishes out and fills the glass...

Setup using an online calc around 6 months ago that I now cant find.

Anything immediately wrong with the above figures that stands out ?

Thanks for your thoughts before i start bottling again :) That was a joke !

[Nick T]

Hey Ged, this is a worry, as I am about to head down the same path! (ie kegging). I was wondering about avoiding all the hassle with line balancing by splasing out on some of these from CB - what do you think?

[James P]

I'm running 3 metres, of 6mm ID on 90kpa, @ between 4 and 8C. At the higher temp there is more froth, lower is better.

Or just figure it out using the spreadsheet here:

[Dale]

I have 5m of 6mm line @ 100kpa running into taps. The taps and about .5m are not inside the fridge (so room temp) and I find the beer hitting the warm tap and glass the problem. On a cold day no foam issue at all warm day 30-40mm foam head.

[jt]

Have played around

So now you know it's true .. if you play with it you'll get foam (and you may also go blind)

18 litres of beer takes time to equilibriate each time you change someting. I reckon degass it and start again using the numbers in the xls file on ahb that JP listed

depending on the carbonation you want, 9 ft of 6mm at 0.75 should be fine

How did you gas it to start with ?

[James P]

Probably had pickled onions.... ;-p

[jt]

he's in a pickle now ...

[denimglen]

Agree with JT.

How did you carbonate - shake and bake or set and forget?

Sounds like you've overcarbonated and by dropping the pressure on the reg when it's coming out the tap it's releasing CO2 in the lines.

I'd try setting the reg to what it should be and letting the beer sit for a week to re-equilibrate.

[Sparky]

I agree with jt & denimglen. Checked out the spreadsheet on James P's link.

Follow the calcs, set the the reg & forget.

Run the system, you'll have to wait a week for the system to balance, not a big deal as any beers poured earlier are fine and give you a hint of understanding what the beer would be like if it was cask condtioned.

Hope that makes sense

Cheers

[Nick T]

Keg balancing is driving me nuts to drink. Is there any such thing as too much line? I have a sprtizy beer (saison) set at 20 PSI, no matter what I do I get acres of foam. The other kegs are all OK (lower pressures). I have now got 6 metres of line attached to a compensating tap, still get foam, foam, foam. The AHB spreadsheet cals actually say I only need 2 metres, could it be that more beer line is not a good thing?

[Chris Banks]

I am by no means experienced in these matters (just got my keg setup going last week) but looking at your setup photo my guess would be that its the amount of beer line you have exposed to room temp causing gas breakout.

Other than that are you sure the gauges on your reg are accurate? have you tried winding back the pressure to say 10 psi and venting the keg - if that works ok work your way up on the pressure

But you need someone whos experienced these things to confirm

[James P]

Other than what Chris has said, all I could suggest is you give your gear to me to test for a week or 52.... always happy to help you out.

What if you swap the kegs over the on the regulator? Recheck that connection at the tap shank?

[Ged]

The only thing that worked for me was to drop the pressure back on the regulator. Much as everything was ' balanced out' that was the only thing that eventually worked for me...Also, it also took a few days for the beer to degass even after I dropped the pressure and vented the keg.