I've recently started kegging beer and I've had to crash/force carbonate 2 kegs. i was miserably unsuccessful both times, with the end result being a disgusting, frothy, head-ladden pour that took 5 minutes to settle into something drinkable. the first time i tried it, i was going to carbonate at 9 PSI for 20-30 minutes. i could still hear the CO2 percolating when i'd gently shake the keg and kind of panicked. my friend suggested i just crank up the jams to 30 PSI for a few minutes and all will be good. frothy mix ensued. yesterday, same story, kind of. 9 PSI. hear zero bubbling. worried. and it was bloody cold outside and I needed a pre-party nap. so i cranked the CO2 up to 30 for 7 minutes, gently rocked the horizontal keg with my foot, and let it settle for 3 hours. the beer was incredibly delicious....once you poured out the f'ing foam. so, my friends, my trusted, anonymous, beer-geek friends. i need your guidance. your advice. i'm tired of making excuses for my poor carbonation. please. halp me.
i've had 2 events in a row where fermentation wanted to go beyond projection and i didn't have time to do it. yesterday, i racked my IPA from the keg 4 days after dry hopping. i did a 6.5% abv IPA (like a moron) and didn't expect fermentation to carry on for over 2.5 weeks.
I'm assuming you're shooting for a 'standard' 2.5 volumes of CO2 at 38-ish degrees. In that case, 9 psi isn't going to work even if you let it sit 20-30 years, let alone 20-30 minutes (though 10 days at 9 psi will get you close). There are twice as many techniques to fast carb a keg of home brew as there are homebrewers. They virtually all work. The downside to most (all?) of them is the risk of overcarbing. Unfortunately, fixing that can be a PITA. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't expect 7 minutes of rocking at 30 psi to overcarbonate the beer. It could be simply that you didn't rest it long enough after you carbed it (think shaking a can of soda then opening it). Carbing this afternoon for a party tonight is a crap shoot, at best. Play with your technique. If the beer is truly overcarbed and not just restless, try cutting your shake, rattle, and roll time in half. If it's still overcarbed, cut it in half again on the next keg. You may have noticed this will take some time to dial in 'your' technique. That's fine -- you'll likely be brewing long enough to use it in the future. My advice is to plan a little better. 'Set it and forget it' is the most reliable technique. It's just not fast.
This might sound like a dumb question, but when you're serving your beer is the CO2 hooked up? What pressure is it set too?
How long is your beer line? 5-6 feet? Is the line clean? What's the temp inside your kegerator? What is your psi set at? 7-8? Is this your home brew? I've kegged 2 home brews so far. Both I would force carb (shoot 25-30psi CO2 into my 5 gal keg), shake the hell out of it for 10 minutes or so. Set it inside my fridge kegerator (inside temp of 32F, with no CO2 hooked up) for 24-48 hours. Connect Co2 and push 20 psi inside, bleed and hit another 20psi and then drop it down to 7-10psi and tap!!
there are a lot of factors involved in balancing a draft system. believe it or not, turning the psi down after carbing is not a good idea. Applying a pressure lower than the carbed pressure allows the carbonation to break out of solution in the line before the point of dispense. You would be better off leaving the pressure set to the same pressure you carbed the beer at. I typically set my homebrew kegs to 10-11 psi at 38F for a week or so. Then i just serve it without changing anything. Always works well for me.
