[Raoul]

Sorry in advance for the long post, but I want to give as complete of a description as possible, as I obviously don't know what may be important to solve my problem.

I recently inherited the components for a kegerator and happened to have an old refridgerator in the garage. After a few tweaks to the thermostat, I am prepared for my first Keg. The kegerator components I inherited are 20+ years old, but were all in good condition.

My system specs: Temperature ~36F. Elevation 5000ft. Beer line is 5 ft long and 3/16 inch diameter. Faucet is about the same height as the top of the keg.

Got my first keg of some gooooood beer (snake river pale ale). Things basically went ok. Beer was well carbonated and fresh. The only problem I had was a little air bubble would form near the faucet end (and not at the keg tap). I figured it was air leaking in and not CO2 coming out of the beer. The end result was the 1st beer every time was foamy, and then it would pour nicely. 30 minutes later, the first beer would be foamy again, etc. Finished the keg, and assumed I just needed a new seal. I tracked down new seals for the beer line ends, the coupler, and the two for the keg tap while I was at it.

Decided at that point that everything could use a really good cleaning (20+ years of beer buildup), so I stripped it down completely and removed all the seals/teflon ball (including the tap). Put it in the ultrasound in acetone...and scrubed it down with a SOS....cleaned it all up and then put it in some chlorinated water and then some boiling water to make sure it was all sterile again. Put it back together, and am pretty confident I got it all back together correctly (no left over parts). Oh yea, I put a tiny smear of olive oil on the o-rings, as it just didn't feel right to put them back dry.

Ok...time for another keg. Picked up a keg of bud light last night to see if I helped the problem. About a 5 minute drive home and then I let it sit in the fridge for ~1hour before trying any of it. Low and behold, it is super foamy now, every beer that comes out of it. What is worse, after the foam dies down (or you pour it off to get to the real beer below) the beer is flat! You can count the bubbles coming up to the surface, whereas the original keg had streaming bubbles.

We drank off of it for a couple of hours, where I screwed with the pressure and stuff, but it aways stayed the same. I checked the lines, and they had no restrictions or kinks. The beer seemed to be pouring fast, so I turned it down to about 10-11 psi before calling it a night. After a restless night of trying to figure out how I can have foamy beer and flat beer at the same time, I looked at the lines this morning and found air bubbles in the beer line at the faucet end still as well as above the tap. Maybe the pressure is too low now....increased to 14 psi.

Not sure what to do next. I am thinking about adding some more beer line, as it seems to pour very quickly and thought that might be aerating it too much and causing the fom. Did I screw something up by taking it all apart? I would think the odds of getting a flat keg from Bud is pretty low (born on June 30).

I would appreciate any advice I can get on helping me to save the beer and get it pouring correctly!!!!!