New to home draft beer

Why all the waiting around? You can tap the keg as soon as you put it in. You could have had a pint of beer instead of your mug of water.

 

with a tower cooler going and the liquid at 38, all should work well.

check the temp on the very first pour of a few ounces. that is the beer in the line.
then check the temp on a second pour of a full glass. that is the cold beer from the keg.

both temps should be identical, indicating that your tower is being chilled to the same temp as the rest of the fridge.

Cheers.

 

I'm curious as well. The longer lines usually do the trick.

 

Not to go off on a tangent, but a number of folks here have erroneously suggested a bad regulator as a possible source of the problem - that the beer may be overcarbonated because a faulty regulator is holding it under a higher pressure than the gauge would indicate. It important to note that a bad regulator, by itself, cannot cause a beer to become overcarbonated without the gauge ratting it out. This assumes, of course, that the gauge is not also defective (it's possible, but unlikely, that both failed at the same time) and that you actually look at it now and then. Replacing a $50+ regulator because it comes with a new $5 gauge is like replacing your car because you got a flat tire. One can't help but wonder how many regulators have been unnecessarily replaced due to this not at all uncommon misunderstanding.

FWIW, in my, admittedly, short experience, gauges need to be replaced every now and then. I replace the gauges on my CO2 regulators and on my pool filter every three years or so. It could be that the $5 consumer grade gauges are not top quality or it could simply be the nature of the beast. Regardless, it is what it is.

 

did the two temps match, first and second pour? let's rule that out first.

couple of things could need some fixing here. 8' of 3/16" ID beverage line, correct?

 

What does the beer in the line look like - solid beer or pockets at the high spots? Did you vent the keg when you tapped it? Also you need to take time between adjustments. This isn't like the volume on a stereo, takes 12-24 hours for changes to show up.

 

Stop randomly adjusting stuff. Assume you are setting up for a 2.5 volumes of CO2 at 38-ish degrees, vent the keg and set the pressure accordingly which would be 11-12 psi. Going arbitrarily low will not serve you any purpose. Stop opening the door, except to answer my question about what the beer line looks like.

 

The beer with areas of bubbles is telling you that you are still unbalanced. In a balanced system you have solid beer. Longer lines slow the flow of properly balanced beer, they cannot correct unbalanced beer, they will just deliver it more slowly.
Just for a gage of where you are, measure the temp of the beer from the second pour. Beer temp, not foam temp. Set the regulator at 11-12 and leave everything alone for 12 hours. You can drink while this is going on, it won't hurt.

 

that is a good question, but there is a simple thing going on here. you have to get a visual idea of what the gas and the liquid are doing in the keg. once you have an idea, the whole set up makes perfect sense. hopefully this will help you understand the idea of balance and you'll be able to diagnose a bit as time goes on.

the keg comes "pre-charged" with dissolved CO2 from the brewery. that is the "vols" of CO2, sometimes seen as v/v (volume of CO2 to volume of liquid... not important)

we apply CO2 pressure to maintain the proper amount of dissolved CO2 an to also provide some lift to get the liquid out of the keg when the faucet is open. open a can of soda, let it sit a few hours and it goes flat. the CO2 leaves the liquid, enters atmosphere until the pressure of CO2 in the air is equal to the pressure of CO2 in the liquid. that is not very much.

in a closed keg, every time you pour a beer you are creating a bit of headspace above the liquid. that means less pressure on the top of the liquid. that means the gas will equilibrate with the pressure in the headspace in time.

if we apply say 10 psi on top of the liquid, in a closed keg, eventually the gas will dissolve until the pressure UP is equal to the DOWN pressure. and the vols will be maintained, if 10 psi is in fact the correct pressure.

if you constantly change the regulator setting you will quickly lose any sense of how much actual gas pressure is being applied to the beer. the liquid loses gas, then it absorbs gas, then it absorbs more gas, then it loses a lot of gas and so on. every change in pressure takes a while because although CO2 is readily absorbed in cold liquid, it is not instant.

change the temp of the liquid and all this goes out the window because the amount of gas dissolved within a liquid changes significantly as the temp changes. maintain a constant temp and things become possible.

lastly, the line length and diameter apply flow restriction. that just slows it all down so you don't have a geyser every time you pour a pint.

and that's all there is to it.

 

It will be a bit flat, but drinkable. Keep the door closed, it needs to get colder. How far is your thermostat set compared to its full travel - do you have room to go colder if the temp doesn't recover?

 

As long as pressure is maintained at 11-12psi, the beer won't go flat. The whole point of maintaining pressure is to prevent the CO2 from escaping the beer.
Assuming the beer is overcarbed, I would expect the pressure to increase. If you don't have a check valve on your gas line, you'll see this on the gauge. I would suggest burping the keg periodically for a few days until things settle down.

 

I think the flatness he was referring to was in a delicious glass of foam, not in the keg.

 

yeah, remember that the regulator is a basically a precision valve. it maintains the proper pressure in the keg. if you remove gas, the regulator will supply enough to get back to whatever psi you have set. the the gas coming out of the co2 regulator is equal to the pressure in the keg pushing back. you can't remove beer fast enough to get ahead of the regulator, it will always squeak out enough gas to maintain the set psi.


wow, you must be a lucky guy, seems like a lot of us are pitching in on this one. a good sign.
Cheers.