The world was fine and peaceful until about halfway through my 4th or 5th keg of coors, when abruptly all flow from the tap ceased. No beer, foam, or air. I cranked up the psi to see if it would break thru, but nothing. Replaced co2 tank and since then this keg has been all foam. You can see the bubbles in the beer line right out of the keg. I have depressurized the keg, lowered psi to 5, increased to 20, no change in foam after waiting about 48 hours between changes. My normal setup is 15.5gal coors light set to 12psi at 40 degrees, 15ft beer line, 650ss tap. How can I get this keg back to its happy place without pouring more gallons of beer down the drain?
Probably worth mentioning that I tried settin the co2 at the usual 12psi before making changes, and I have since pulled apart the tap handle and checked all orings, finding 0 leaks anywhere
well, not easy. but not a lost cause. when you ran out of CO2 and continued to pour, you were using the pressure in the keg to get the beer out. once that was used and there was no gas in the headspace left to push beer, the CO2 began to come out of solution. with no pressure, no beer pours. so that's what was going on there. applying new CO2 at different pressures, venting the keg, lowering then raising the pressure will make things very difficult. you have no way of knowing the carbonation in the kegged beer. turn off the gas. vent the keg, a few times for a few hours until you only get a small burst of gas each time. reapply 12 psi and wait, for days even. if you shake the keg a bit the gas will absorb faster. you should be able to re-carb to the proper level, or close enough. don't rush it. 15' of 3/16" bev line is way too much. if you like it great, but your pour is probably very limp, variable and not controllable. 6' or maybe 10'. Cheers.
Thanks for the sound advice, note taken when the beer stops flowing, leave the tap closed; shes done. Currently venting all pressure, will reapply c02 later this evening and leave it alone for a couple days We'll see if I ever let the co2 bottle run out mid keg again after all this!
Don't wait until the beer stops flowing (you have removed CO2 from the beer to get slow pours). You should easily be able to detect when the beer starts flowing at a much less rapid pace than normal to give you a clue to check the CO2 tank. But with 15' of beer line, normal may be very slow, lazy pours in the 1st place. Are you sure that you just "Ran out" of CO2? Or do you have a leak from a recent re-connection?
Thanks for all the replies. I completely drained all the pressure from the keg as mentioned and started from scratch. Still all foam. Emptied keg and got a new one then the regulator wouldnt hold 12 psi, kept creeping up to some absurd amount. Never had this issue before, maybe it was the actual culprit all along although i didnt have an issue with on the previous keg. It was a cheapo that came with kegerator so i replaced it with a quality regulator. Now all is well again, and dialed in at 15%. Cheers fellas
