carbonation problemn need advice

[wlockwood]

Here is the re-cap.
Racked into a corny keg, bleed off head space, chilled and pressuizzed to 25 psi., agitated periodically over the course of 3.5 days. then bled the pressure down to 5 psi.
Problem: dispensing too much foam and beer (kolsh) does not seem carbonated enough after the foam settles.

thank you in advance,
will l.

[wlockwood]

I should mention that I sanitized the keg with starsan, inverted it to drain weel, when I racked lots of foam billowed out (from the starsan).

[Bill]

Hi Will
How long is the length of hose you are using to dispense with? There is a formula out there so you can assure that your pressure is balanced, but i use 5' of 3/16 beverage line at about 10psi and I don't have any problems.
I stole the below from http://hbd.org/clubs/franklin/public_ht ... lance.html for calculating length of beer line

Code: Select all

Once you have established the CO2 pressure on your keg, you can determine what length of beer line you need to balance the system. The basic premise is that we need to drop nearly all the pressure between the keg and the faucet, leaving 1 psi to actually get the beer to come out. The formula for calculating the line length is:

L = P - (H * .5) - 1
    _________________     
            R

where

    * L = length of beer line in feet
    * P = pressure set on regulator gauge
    * H = Total height from the center of the keg to faucet in feet
    * R = Resistance of line from the following Resistance Table
    * 1 = this is the residual pressure remaining at the faucet* 

* If you need a higher dispensing pressure to increase the dispense rate, use 2 instead of 1.

[wlockwood]

the tap is one of those 10 inch picnic taps

[Greenblood]

at 22psi, no agitation, and 44 degrees, my beers are usually carbonated in 3 days. It is possible that you may have over carbonated, but the 10 inch picnic tap could also be the problem as Bill indicated. You may consider making a longer tap line (5+ft), coiling it up, and securing it with zip ties so you don't have to deal with the long length.