Continuing to have issues with my 1/6 kegs and my budget dual regulator, wondering if I could get some advice. It may just be I need a better regulator. It’s showing empty on the gas level gauge but fires air when I open the tank up bare so I know there’s gas in there. I’ve only put two kegs through it so far. 5gal cylinder. Anyway one keg about half full the other around quarter full. Noticed a taste issue and opened up the cooler to find the PSI had jumped somehow from 10 (where I keep it) to 20. I purged the air at the release points to drop the pressure, removed the tank and bled the 2 kegs of all air again. Connected them back up. The nearly empty keg I physically heard air rushing into it when I opened its valve. Which I don’t think is normal? So I shut the air valve to that side and just left the other keg open. It’s holding at 10 for a while but every hour two it creeps up by a pound. No idea what the heck is causing it. Any thoughts appreciated. I figure by narrowing down to one valve at a time maybe we can get somewhere but it looks like I have a different issue on each side.
A couple of things: If your quantity reads zero but you still have pressurized gas then for sure that gauge is tits-up. If your supply was 20psi for any length of time then the beer will be pressurized to that level. To bring it down you must release pressure to zero and let the excess CO2 dissolved in the beer "escape" into the headspace. This may take hours but will happen quicker in the 1/4 full keg than the 1/2 full (larger headspace). Just depending, you might have to vent two times to get rid of that extra gas. Do not re-pressurize until you've dropped the pressure below what would be the 10psi level, otherwise the off-gassing might take 3 or more vents. Ideally you want the dissolved pressure to be below 10psi (to be sure) before you re-pressurize...then give it a day or two to equalize back to 10. That may explain why you see a "creep" in the keg pressure (because of the off-gassing). Patience here is a virtue. Oh yeah, it's perfectly normal to hear gas rush into an empty keg. Once you are certain that the pressure level has been reduced, then any creep back up to a higher level will mean it's time for a new reg. Just another item: you're calling it "air" but I know what you are meaning. In the homebrew world we consider air to be the enemy, so calling it CO2 or just gas could prevent casualties from friendly fire. You might want to hang around in Home Bar as we talk about stuff like this all the time. The posters in that Forum seem smarter than the ones here.
