just want to see if anyone's experienced this issue before. Kegged a stout last weekend did my normal method of 30 psi for about a day and half and then down to 12 psi for the week and the beer pours And tastes totally flat. This method usually has the beer at a decent carbonation after a week. So I Weighed the tank and there was only about a pound of gas left. I just hooked up a new tank full tank and will try again. The keg holds the pressure and I checked for leaks but found none. With such little gas remaining in the tank could there just not been enough to dissolve into the beer but enough to just hold the head space?
Not really. One pound of liquid CO2 is significant. Even if you only had one ounce of liquid CO2, it will still produce pressure and as long as the headspace of the keg is receiving this pressure it will dissolve into the beer. Only when your pressure reads low (zero) will there be no carbon dioxide to dissolve. A week at 30/12 psi should give you a decent level of carbonation. First of all, do a "swish" test. Drink some of the beer and give it a hard swish in your mouth. This is a po-man's way to measure carb level. If you get no tingling (CO2 breaking out of solution) then you can pretty much be sure that the CO2 leaked out. To troubleshoot, crank up the pressure to 30 or 40+ and use a squirt bottle to test all the fitting to include the PRV. Dunk your QDs in a bucket of water and look for bubbles. With the gas QD disconnected from the keg, shut off your tank master valve and see how pressure holds over night. From your description, your keg is the most likely suspect. Good luck.
