Foamy Pours

[peters6278]

Hi all. I spent quite a bit of time digging through other threads on this subject but couldn't find anything that answered my question, so I appologize for adding yet another 'Foamy Beer' thread.

I am getting consistenty foamy pours out of my kegerator setup and must be doing something wrong to cause it, but can't figure it out. My first pint is usually 3/4 foam, but if I pour three or so successive pints, the last one usually comes out better, with only 1/4 pint of foam or so.

My kegerator setup is as follows:
2 ball-lock corny kegs with gas lines t-ed off a manifold
2 tap tower
6 feet of 3/16 beer line between each keg and the tower fittings
Temperature controlled to 34 degrees with a 1 degree differential

My tower is pretty well insulated (I have two layers of silpad on the inside circumference and underneith the cap at the top. Per advice from other kegerator builds to limit foamy pours, I also built a small box blower which is situated at the bottom of the fridge with a tube running up inside of and to top of the tower to keep the internal tower temperature the same as the coldst part of the kegerator. The blower fan runs constantly, independent of the kegerator compressor.

I force carbonate all of my kegs to 15 psi (via the set it and forget it method)
for a week before moving to my kegerator for serving. Per my carbonation chart, 15 PSI at 34 degrees is ~3.0 volumes of CO2 and within the appropriate carbonation range for the beers I currently have on tap (one blonde and one wheat).

I like the taste and mouthfeel of this level of carbonation, but am I overcarbonating my beer? With my setup, shouldn't I be able to achieve relatively normal pours at that carbonation level? Could there be some other problem in my setup that could be causing this?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jwplessner]

Did you try to lower serving pressure and purge before pouring?

 

[peters6278]

I lowered the pressure to 10 PSI and purged both kegs. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the issue.

 

[JDGator]

Lower pressure to 3-4 psi. If its still all foam then its over carbed.

 

[bob1852]

Might need longer lines. When I switched from 5' to 10' it made a big difference.

 

[m_c_zero]

Might need longer lines. When I switched from 5' to 10' it made a big difference.

+1 10' lines are they way to go!

 

[Bobby_M]

Yes, 10 feet of line will fix you up. Lowering the pressure for the pours is a bad solution if you like the 3 volume carb level.

 

[peters6278]

Thanks all for the tips. I bled the pressure in the kegs and lowered the serving pressure to 5 PSI and that fixed my problem...for the short term anyway, so the kegs were not over carbonated. Good news since I like the higher CO2 volume in my beer. I'll try the 10 ft lines next and hopefully that will solve my problem for good, so that I can keep a head pressure of 15 PSI. I'll post an update when the longer lines are installed.

 

[gr8shandini]

Google "balanced keg system". Basically, you're looking to have enough restriction in the line to get back to atmospheric pressure by the time the beer is introduced to the glass. The math isn't difficult. 6 feet sounds a tad short for 15 psi. Back it off to 10-12 until you get new lines and you should be OK.

And you should adjust the system to support the level of carbonation you like, not the other way around. It's your beer. No one else can tell you if it's over carbed or not.