Beer Forum

Yes i have a basic kegging system it includes a 5 pound co2 tank ,a dual reg taprite regulater and a picnic tap. My problem is even at a dispensing pressure of 7 # my beer is coming out almost all foam. And the picnic tap drips all over. I have thought about attaching a perlick tap handle to a piece of wood to help but any suggestions would be appreciated. It may be possible i over carbed my beer but it tastes fine . What are the common causes of to much head on the beer . Well 1 hr later i have an edit it seems my beer is very foaming but flaT IN THE GLASS. So i may have screwed the initail carbing up i suppose but still why flat beer but just foam out of the picnic tap. Oh and excuse my spelling errors and such but ..... well i AM drinking the beer

If the beer is overcarbed, like say if you leave it at 30 psi for a week like I accidentally did recently, then when you reduce the pressure to serving level (5-7 psi in my case) the excess CO2 will want to come out and cause foaming in the lines (which equals a glass of foam every time). But maybe that's not your issue:

Are you trying to throttle the tap? Throttling the tap (not opening it fully) will make a glass of foam every time too, even when the beer is undercarbed.

Charlie

How did you carb the beer initially? If with the CO2, how much pressure & for how long?
What is the diameter of the tubing between the keg & the tap? How long is that tubing?
How are you keeping the keg cold? Could you describe your setup in a bit more detail?
Are you opening the tap fully to pour or are you trying to control the flow with the tap?

Some picnic taps are really cheap plastic and crappy quality. If yours is dripping all over the place, it shouldn't be. You might want to pick up a replacement. A Perlick is great but it really needs to be mounted properly, not just to a piece of wood. It will be a pain in the ass to finagle a glass out of it holding on to 3 things (your wood, the handle, the glass).

As the others said:
Make sure your beer is carb'd to the right pressure and temp.
Make sure your beer line is long enough so that it balances and doesn't foam up.
Make sure you open the tap all the way when dispensing.

Ok folks after researching the foaming further there is a 90% chance the beer is over carbed. On a side note i downloaded a beer carb chart. The instructions say when you find your chilled beer temp and your desired carb level to set the regulater at that pressure for about 5 day. But do you leave it at that pressure or reduce for serving. An example is beer at 40 degrees beer carb in volumes at 2.47 pressure is set at 12 for 5 days and then what?????

5 days is about the minimum of what it will take to go from uncarbonated to carbonated if you set the temp and pressure like that and leave it alone.

If yours is over carbonated, you should disconnect the gas, release the pressure release valve and empty out all the co2 from the keg. Close the valve, leave it there with no gas line connected and the headspace will equalize (think how a bottle of soda re-pressurizes from the carbonation in the liquid after you open and reseal it).
You may need a few repeats of this to get the carbonation level down to where it should be, but it will get there eventually. Then reconnect with your gas at the right level and you should be good to go from there.

HTH-

ok but is serving pressure the same as the carbing pressure? I think 12 # in my example

If your lines are balanced, then yes.
What you want is to make the line resistance balance the pressure so that the beer flows out smoothly with little to no foam. If it lacks resistance, you get too much foam.
Too much, and the beer doesn't come out.

Read this for more background:
http://beersmith.com/blog/2011/07/14/ke ... raft-beer/

Usually about 6 feet of 3/16th ID beer line is what you want to balance a 12 psi at 40F.