New to beer/kegerator

Ok... I too am not arguing or offering "flawed advice". I am merely saying what I've done and where my system is at. So I would love to hear your opinion based on my system - lines, elevation, temperature etc - that you would do to alter it. I do not want to alter my temperature as my IPA does not taste as well when its cooler (5.5C for the 99% of the planet who is not in the dark stone ages and uses celcius vs farenheit) Cheers!!!!

 

The formula on that page is not meant to be used to calculate the pressure, it is meant to calculate the line length. It doesn't take into account the volumes of CO2 for the beer, or the temperature. Those are two of the basic three items used in balancing a system, and aren't debatable. Read the paragraph below the formula and it walks you through the proper calculations to use the formula correctly. You start with the temperature and the volumes of CO2, and from there using the line resistance it gives you the proper line length. As it is shown there, it is misleading. There isn't a brewer in anywhere that would agree that 4psi is proper. The only reason you don't have flat beer is that your are drinking it faster than the CO2 can bleed out of it. You are really looking for 6'+ lines and an applied pressure of around 13.5 to be balanced.

 

To clarify. The way you were using the formula doesn't account for volumes of CO2 or temp. When used correctly, the formula does account for both items.

 

Absolutely. You can change the carb level up to the structural limit of the keg. It may take several days (depends on amount of headspace and geometry) but at some point it will equalize. Also, if you find you went too far it's fairly simple to reduce the carb level.

If moving the carb level any appreciable amount you'll need to adjust beer line length. This isn't really difficult, just some more gear and a few minutes . . . probably some trail and error the first time. There's nothing wrong with having different lines for each different carb level . . . I run my Belgians at 16psi/12'-lines.

 

I might try that with my next keg. Already through the last one and picking up another tomorrow for my wife's Halloween party. I did a lot of work on the kegerator today though, I made more room in the tower for the tower fan and beer line so it will be easier to work on the faucet when I need to, insulated the tower better than just the foam insert, and I took out the plate that has the condenser coils? off to defrost it and found that the thermostat was behind that, so I moved it to the front top. I'm hoping that will help my temps quite a bit. I really wish I'd have known all this and done this much research before I got this, I could have built one much easier and cheaper

 

On the plus side even had you done the research you'd probably find eventually you would have done things differently. I've had my igloo for about 2 years now and I'm still learning. Some things have worked due to dumb luck and some I've learned the hard way. Other things just come from using the kegerator. Things like realizing I want to have enough room for a tall quarter and a sixth at the same time rather than just two sixths. There are a handfull of beers I can only get in tall quarters (Firestone Walker for instance). In a perfect world I'd have two separate kegerators rather than a dual tap so I could store them at different temperatures (or two dual tap kegerators ). I'm interested in getting some barrel aged beers on keg that I wouldn't want to serve at the same temp as my wife's lager. Then there's convincing my wife that its fine that my beer is nearly twice as expensive as hers...

Now back to checking if I've finally fixed the leak in my CO2 lines that has been vexing me.