Foamy Beer

Well honestly it hasn't sat long enough to say it doesn't have air pockets. Check it later. If it was the coupler, a common culprit is the check ball. Have you ever disassembled it and brushed the inner bore clean? Many people leave it out and never worry about it again.

 

Remove the retainer and the ball. Sometimes the retainer is a spring, sometimes it is a plastic piece. Take a picture of the top of the coupler.

 

Maybe I'm having trouble following you....you said you had the new coupler on, and the old one was off, and everything was good? I was talking about looking at the ball on the old coupler that was not in use, which was the one that gave you headaches. I wasn't suggesting taking the coupler that was working (presumably new and clean) apart. Honestly, stop touching shit on the set up.

 

Makes no sense...one post ago you asked if you should put the ball back in on the coupler that isn't connected because the flow with the new coupler is too fast? You are very hard to follow. I'm checking out. Get the v/v. Get lines that are at least 8' long. Figure it out as best you can, good luck.

 

Longer line slows the flow of balanced beer. If the lines have no pockets in them but you flow too fast you need longer line. I guess I didn't check out.

 

Listen, cut a piece off of your line take it to lowes get 15 foot of line... It's like $0.62 per foot, put it on. If it's too slow cut it back a foot and see how that goes.

 

If you want genuine vinyl flavor in your beer do this.

If you want your beer to taste like beer, get food grade line like you are supposed to use.

 

All I'm saying is it's a cheap way to troubleshoot

 

I'll just add that lines made from different materials (even with the same inner diameter) can have different amounts of line resistance. (Thus different balanced lengths.)

 

Gishua; Don't get frustrated; there are answers to your problems. It isn't too hard to tell who can help you on this site; Doug is one of them. It is critical to listen and respond to his exact questions. I had the same problem just trying to get a proper beer temperature. I don't want to say that I was ignoring his advice, I just thought I knew what I was doing (NOT).

I think you have the temperature figured out, you MUST start with knowing this. Without it, go no further. Know what and why your beer temp is what it is; I had a keg delivered by a sales rep who obviously had it out of the cold box for quite some time, delivered it, and I picked up soon after. Temp check after I hooked it up was mid 40's. Don't troubleshoot keg temp; just leave keg in kegerator overnight (1/6 keg; maybe 24 hrs+ for 1/2 keg) to get beer temp equilibrated. And ensure you have a calibrated temp probe. Don't cheap out; you'll be using it to continue to monitor setup.

1) Temperature: Use a 10 oz room temp glass; pour beer-dump it (I put it in another glass-no waste here); then re-fill. Take temp and don't touch the glass with the temp probe. Be very sure that you know this exact temp; without it, you are causing issues and should go no further.

2) Beer's v/v #; you have to know the v/v's of your beer. Google is your friend. Check a few places before thinking you got the right v/v number.

3) CO2 pressure; can be set based off v/v chart with known beer temp & beers v/v. Set the co2 pressure. If everything is cool, in a perfect world, you get a perfect beer!!


If you did the above and still have foamy problems, you can at least troubleshoot in a normal manor. If your beer is coming out real fast with correct settings (And equipment), then you probably only need to add longer beer line. It reduces the flow of beer, while still allowing the proper co2 pressure to keep beer from going flat. Adding beer line length will slow beer flow and also reduce foaming caused by high beer flow. For me, it is the final part of balancing your system. I'm at this point right now with my setup; I get perfect beers at 10 psi, but can't set it at the 12 psi mark per chart. So I'm going from 6' line to 10' line.

But I feel good about the equipment I am using. Doug has questioned you on your equipment. I think you eliminated what he said you should. But from reading your thread, I don't feel too good about your regulator. Your 2nd keg was good for the first few days, then went sour/foamy. That sounds like a faulty regulator. Could be many things; but I don't have the setup that you do. I replaced my initial cheap regulator with a very good one, and have not had any goofy co2 issues anymore.

Again; don't give up. The bad regulator massively over-pressurized a full 1/2 keg of Blue Moon for me. Took me almost 5-7 days to burp that stuff out. I was ready to give up (On the keg and just drink pitchers of beer!!), but on day 5-7, got beer back n shape (With new regulator).

Good luck.

 

I think we all start out that way, I did too!

 

Cheers!