Beer seems undercarbed

[WhiskeyR]

This may be my imagination, but after kegging and drinking the past 5 batches or so, I have not been happy with my level of carbonation.

I carb to style and my lines are 8ft. I use the excel worksheet for balancing I found here as well as the carbonation chart.

My beers taste fine and I am getting the right amount of head with no pouring problems, but they just seem kind of flat tasting compared to craft beers I drink at the bar.

Interestingly, if I reduce the pressure down to 8psi and purge before pouring I get a better beer with better carbonation.

Any advise?

 

[Yooper]

This may be my imagination, but after kegging and drinking the past 5 batches or so, I have not been happy with my level of carbonation.

I carb to style and my lines are 8ft. I use the excel worksheet for balancing I found here as well as the carbonation chart.

My beers taste fine and I am getting the right amount of head with no pouring problems, but they just seem kind of flat tasting compared to craft beers I drink at the bar.

Interestingly, if I reduce the pressure down to 8psi and purge before pouring I get a better beer with better carbonation.

Any advise?

What psi and temperature do you store the beer at? I personally like my beer higher carbed than many of the carb charts show for the style.

 

[WhiskeyR]

What psi and temperature do you store the beer at? I personally like my beer higher carbed than many of the carb charts show for the style.

As an example, right now I've got an Amber Ale on at 43 degrees and 14psi. I get the right amount of head, but it just tastes like the carbonation went to the head and not the beer. This one has been on co2 for over 2 weeks.

 

[audger]

This one has been on co2 for over 2 weeks.

at what temperature?

 

[WhiskeyR]

at what temperature?

43f

 

[Yooper]

My advice is to get longer lines. It sounds like the co2 is getting "knocked out" of the beer on the way to the glass so you need more resistance by getting longer lines.

 

[WhiskeyR]

Thanks Yooper, I will give that a shot.

 

[blackbear219]

I sort of feel as if I have the same problem. I get a decent head and I can see bubbles in solution but I don't get that "fizzy-fizzle on my tongue" feeling that I get from commercial beers. This is a keezer, btw.

I used to have 5' long, 1/4" beer lines at 12 psi. That wasn't working out, too foamy. So I went to 8' long, 3/16" lines at 10 psi and I get great pours now. Overall, I am extremely happy with the way my keezer is working right now, but it would be nice to tweak this one thing just a bit. I'm at about 42 degrees, somewhere in that ballpark.

I know a lot of people coil their beer lines on top of their kegs. I am running my beer lines down to the floor of the keezer. So they go from the keg, down to the floor and back up to the tap. I was hoping that putting as much of the line as possible deeper into the keezer would help keep my lines cooler. I do have a fan running in there but it is still a little warmer at the top so this helped me with the (slightly) foamy first pour. I don't know if this makes any difference with anything. It's a relatively short distance but obviously gravity must play a factor to some degree.

If I'm feeling that I would like a little more carbonation, should I just get some longer lines (maybe 10-12 foot?) and crank up the psi a bit higher?

 

[TJTHEBEST]

I've been experiencing this as well. I have my beer at 12 psi and 38 degrees and it still seems a tad undercarbed. Its still drinkable but i swear its not actually at the carb level that the chart says it is (at least as far as i can tell).

 

[blackbear219]

As an update, I think I've pretty much isolated my issue.

My temp controller was set to about 35 degrees. I took the temp of the beer that was coming out of the tap and it was 50 degree. Whoa. So I took the temp of the bottle of water I have my probe in, 45 degrees. This explains why my beer isn't as carbonated as I thought it should be, because it wasn't as cold as I thought it was.

Apparently, my the analog dial on my controller is off by about 10 degrees. I found another post about this with the same controller I have and there is a way to open it, realign the dial so it reads correctly and close it back up again. I'm not going to bother with that as it is just a cosmetic fix. I now know it reads 10 too low, so I will set it down 10 below where I want it. I don't think there is anything wrong with the controller, it's just that the analog dial doesn't match up to exactly where it should which apparently is a pretty common problem if they put it in the manual that you can open it up and re-align the dial.

I set it to 30 and I am letting it stabilize now. Hopefully this will get me to about 45 degree beer. If so, I will then turn it down another couple degrees and try to zone in on that 42 degree beer mark which is where I want it.