[Brad5980]

Raoul -

Sounds exactly like my current problem I have posted in the Troubleshooting forum under "foam". What finally resulted in no bubbles in the line? Was it your beer line legnth? How long was the final length?

quote:Originally posted by Raoul

I don't think I have any leak, as I have shut down the CO2 tank, and seen that the pressure (low side) remains the same (at least for a day). I figure any leak, and that would drop. I don't have a double-side gauge. I assumed it wasn't that useful, as the majority of the CO2 should be liquid form, adn the high pressure gauge would therefore always read a constant value, until you start getting low. I was planning on just weighing the tank to know when I am getting low. However, maybe I need to rethink this and upgrade to a 2 gauge regulator.

I figure with my keg of Budlight, that perhaps it is just a bad keg. I couldn't come up with any real reason which I could be doing wrong that would make a brand new keg go flat. The only possibility that I could come up with is if the grocery store put it in their freezer and froze it partially. I can't buy from the distributer here, the grocery stores have to get it for me (and mark up the $$). However, after a full 24 hours later, the beer was not only flat, but now it tasted worse than before. Therefore, I am exchanging the rest of this keg tonight for a new one. That should tell me immediately if the problem is on my end, or just a bad keg.

I have no idea how you work out the correct pressure for my temperature & elevation, but thanks for the info! I assume I should remain around 15psi, even when I switch back to some good micros? Maybe a slight tweak, but 15psi is about where I need to be? The distributer gave me 12 feet of new beer line, so I can start experimenting with the length. Is is possible to join 2 lengths of beer line, or will the connector cause more aeration / foam problems? I was wondering him about building a manifold of sorts, where you could turn a valve and add a foot of beer line and more valves for more, until you dialed in the correct length. Just wondering that if the next beer wants a lower psi, then I might have to remove a foot of line to compensate? Maybe this is all moot, and I should stop worrying about it all, and just drink a beer....or two.

The good news is that I don't see any air bubbles in the beer line today, so hopefully that problem is solved. As far as a heat source goes at the shank/faucet, this must exist for my setup, but I figure it must be the same for every setup. I drilled a hole in the side of my fridge, and put the shank through there. Therefore, one half of the shank is cold (presumably not as cold as the fridge) since it is inside, and the faucet is outside along with the other side of the shank. Therefore, the whole assembly is probably close to the average of the outside temperature and the inside temperature (most likely warmer since there is more mass outside due to the faucet). Not sure what can be done about this as I want to be able to draw beer without opening the fridge. I did think of building a small insulating box around the faucet?

Thanks again for all of your help! This site rocks. I have learned a lot by reading all of the other posts!!!

-Raoul