Commercial tap, excessive foam

[jdubs21]

My kegerator has 3 corny kegs and 1 commercial keg. All corny kegs pour fine but the commercial keg pours with about 3/4 pint of foam. Even after pouring a full pitcher it looks like the liquid line slowly fills with air bubbles. Is there something wrong with the commercial tap seal? What should I look for to fix this issue?


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[Brewerforlife]

What temp. is the beer being served at? What pressure is the commercial beer being pushed at? What exact commrcial beer are we talking? The bubbles your seeing in the despense line near the coupler is probably CO2 coming out of solution, due to not enough head pressuer being applied Im assuming. I'll await your response before elaborating any further.

 

[jdubs21]

The keezer is set at 44 degrees. I have the regulator set at 12 psi. The beer on tap is currently a Pilsner but I had the same issue with the IPA I had on tap last. My serving hose is about 8' long. The other 2 kegs on tap are corney kegs with the same settings and they are pouring fine.


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[dancingfetus]

I had heard that if the keg is from a brewery then they carb at a higher psi to help adjust for the longer lengths of beer lines in bars.

 

[gnef]

Do you have a way of checking the pressure in the commercial keg? Something like a spunding valve that you could use to not only check the pressure, but also bleed off any excess pressure would be really handy for this.

Barring that, you can check to see if the line is getting close to any evaporator coils or if there are any other temperature differentials that could be causing CO2 to come out of solution.

Also, have you tried swapping the lines to see if it is something with that particular line or faucet?

 

[jddevinn]

Do you have individual regulators? It sounds like the commercial beer is carbonated to a higher carb volumes than your beers, so although you are pushing with the same pressure CO2 the commecial beer has more CO2 in solution and therefore more of the CO2 is coming out during serving. You should balance the line length to the carb volume..... although realistically if you keg all your beers to the same CO2 volumes and buy commercial beers carbed to different levels (pils and IPA will probably be diff) you could just get a flow control faucet for that one tap.

 

[zachattack]

12 psi @ 44 degrees = 2.3 volumes of CO2. The commercial keg is probably carbed closer to 2.6-2.7 volumes (most are) so you need to increase the pressure up to about 16 psi or turn the temperature down a bit. Right now the beer is overcarbonated relative to your current pressure, hence the foaming. As you keep drinking it will re-equilibrate at the lower carb level eventually.

 

[Morrey]

Does your regulator allow you to adjust different psi for each keg you are running? My old regulator simply had a "Y" valve, so one psi was same in both kegs in my dual setup. I changed that regulator so both kegs have individual psi settings.

I'll vote with Zachattack on the overcarbing/equilibrium issue based on the warm temp you are serving. It will eventually equalize, but not quickly. An easier fix may be to bring temp down a bit.

One more check....assuming the commercial keg is Sankey, check the O rings on both the keg and your Sankey coupler. Lube lightly and see if that helps.