I've been kegging for over a year now and I don't know if I've been lucky or what, but after only recently losing a 20#er and a 5 #er , I'm thinking the best way to go is keeping my valves shut and only opening when pouring is getting slow. What do ya'll do? I routinely dry hop in my kegs and up to this point have never had a problem, but did notice a leaky lid seal after bottling with my beergun...the keg in question wasn't one getting bottled however. What's with that?...being a little hard of hearing at my age makes trouble shooting leaks even more difficult...my LHBS must love me.
If you have a leaky seal lid, get some keg lube. Also if you're loosing C02, make up a soapy water solution an check your hoses for a leak. A 20 lb'r lasts me well over a year of beer pours.
I am pushing 7 kegs and get well over a year off a 20 pounder. Search for the leak. I used Star San instead of soapy water.
I change all of my O-rings every so often and use lots of keg lube on every seal and never have a leak, despite having old beat up kegs with loose lids and dented posts.
I do the same thing, I have a few temperamental kegs that I just can't find or stop some very slow leaks in, no matter what I do. My tank is outside of the kegerator so I only turn the gas **** valve on when I'm pouring, the shut it off after. I leave the tank valve open, the regulator doesn't seem to leak.
How do you keep beer in such kegs carbonated? Eventually they will go flat if you are losing CO2 without having a tank connected. Of course if you are drinking these kegs fast then it probably doesn't matter too much...
The leaks are very slow and undetectable (at least by me). And they seem to become even slower at lower pressures. So they hold enough pressure to keep them from going flat, but if I were to leave the line pressure on, it would drain my tank much quicker than normal. Not over night but still much quicker. I have a main high pressure regulator that goes to two secondary low pressure regulators which feeds 5 CO2 lines. So the leaks could be in that mess somewhere two. But I can't find leaks there either. I'm sure its a combination of both. But it usually only happens with certain kegs. I just keep it limping along until. I see the same phenom with cleaned kegs that I pressurize to 30psi and set aside until ready to use. Most of them hold the full pressure indefinitely, but a couple lose pressure and by the time I use them are down do some low amount. Still pressurized but very little, it drives me nuts.
I had a slow leak that drained my 5# tank in 2 months, so very slow indeed. It drove me nuts but I eventually found it was where my wye splitter attached to my dual regulator. It took lots of troubleshooting and spraying down with starsan solution to find it. Now I'm on the same 5#tank for one year (I use it only to dispense not to carbonate as I have a 10# tank for carbonating/cleaning/purging etc). I hear you on the frustration...
