Please help. Bought Dansby Chill & Tap and foam!

[cavern]

keg #1 went just fine. hooked everything up as instructed, set psi to ~10-12 psi per owner's manual on a new river pale ale keg (old dominion brewing co beer - virginia) and everything was GREAT. towards the end of the first keg there was a little more foam than is desirable, but nothing ridiculous.

then...hooked up keg #2 recently (still new river) and foam, foam, foam...

figured it was dirty lines, so i took everything apart, washed all the parts and everything, put it back together, and still the same thing - a burp at the very beginning of the draw, followed by foamy beer followed by what looks like clear beer, but that beer is already ruined by then.

i've done lots of stuff - lowered the pressure to almost nothing, lengthened my line and increased the pressure, everything.

i'm starting to wish i never had this brainstorm to do the kegerator - as i'm probably going to waste this whole keg troubleshooting.

any help is GREATLY appreciated

[albertobob]

Sounds like a problem I have had on some of my kegs, including my current keg of Heineken. I posted yesterday with almost the same post as you, only a little longer and more wordy, but that's me. You didn't mention what the temperature of you kegerator was at. If you haven't already you should put a thermometer in your kegerator. What I use to use before I got special kegerator thermometer from Micro Matic was a standard laboratory thermometer placed inside of a glass of salt water. The reason I use salt water is that my fridge sits at about 29 degrees F the salt lowers the freezing point of the water in the cup and keeps the thermometer from getting frozen into the cup. Granted you shouldn't have this problem because your fridge should be set to somewhere around 38 degrees F. Still the temperature of your fridge will effect how much CO2 dissolves into your keg.
At a lower temperature CO2 has a higher affinity for the water molecules and thus dissolves into the beer in higher quantities. This is fine and good as long as the beer stays under pressure and at that temperature. If the beer is introduced into an environment where the pressure is less and the temperature is higher then the dissolved CO2 no longer remains in the aqueous solution and converts back to CO2 gas and bubbles out of the beer producing foam. Now you want this process to occur when you pour a pint but to much CO2 coming out of the beer causes problems. The quantity of CO2 in the beer is directly related to the total pressure and temperature. When I took chem we used grams of CO2 per mL of solution, but for draft beer dispensing, units of volumes appear to be used. Where one volume is equal to the quantity of CO2 dissolved in the beer at normal atmospheric pressure, which I am assuming is pressure at see level or roughly 760mm of mercury (Hg). In the last day I have learned that German lagers are generally maintained 2.5 volumes, or 2.5 times the dissolved CO2 as compared to dissolved CO2 in the beer at regular pressure (760mm Hg). There is a table that shows the number of volumes of CO2 a keg is maintained at, at various temperatures and pressures. This is a link to a PDF version of the table http://www.zahmnagel.com/pdf/CO2.pdf
My hunch is that like my keg maybe yours got to cold or you may have had it initially under to much pressure and the volume of CO2 in the keg became to much. Here is to my understanding the problem with this. Even if you lower the pressure on your regulator the CO2 already in the beer is going to dissolve out of the beer and raise the pressure above where you had it set until the CO2 reaches a new equilibrium. The pressure will be higher then what you set it at, but there will be slightly less CO2 dissolved into the beer. If you read my second post on the thread Foamy Heineken http://www.micromatic.com/forum/us-en/trouble-shooting-beer-quality-home/1986-foamy-heineken.html#post8914 I explain what I did to try to reduce the total volumes of CO2 in my keg. Now I can't say that what I did was the right ting to do, I will find out if it worked over the next couple of days , but if it did work then half my keg will be saved.
What I would do if I were you is I would find out what the temperature of my kegerator is and then compare it to the chart along with your initial CO2 pressure and see if you happened to over carbonate the keg by mistake. There could be other things that could be wrong with your kegerator and I am by no means an expert in this but I hope this helps you and your kegerator out.

[cavern]

thank you....

so, are you saying that i should turn down the pressure at the regulator, vent the keg a bit, and then see if the pressure slowly rises back up (as co2 comes out of the beer)?

again, thank you VERY much for your input

i also raised the temp a few degrees in the kegerator. i had the thermostat set to 36, now it's at 38

[mac114]

You can check other post but the bad news is the Danby is known to have problems with foam. I had one and got rid of it. Raising the temperature is not the right thing to do. Knowing that the read out of the temperature setting on the Danby is off by any where from 3 to 5 degrees warmer than it says it is raising the temp setting will only make it worse. I always set mine at 36 degrees and adjusted the psi. Never got it good but did get it better. Finally gave up and wet out and bought a Beverage Air unit which is more expensive but every pour is perfect. What I save in lost beer has paid for the the new kegerator.

Do a search for Danby improvements. There are many things you can do to improve your kegerator.

Best of luck.

[cavern]

for an update, i lowered the psi to say 8psi and 6 hours later it was back up to 10. so perhaps it IS overcarbonation after all, i've lowered it back down to 7 and am planning on repeating this until it stabilizes around 10psi.

please respond, anyone, if you have any advice because i'm a total newbie at this. thanks a ton!