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Old 02-20-2007, 07:53 AM
Buck Buck is offline
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Question Suddenly 6 lines don't pour.

I was at a place yesterday with a 24 line system and 6 lines are bad. It's 145' long coming from 2 box coolers outside. It has a 60/40 blender on it along with a large powerpack for the trunklines and another for the shanks. The shanks actually come through the back of an old boat mounted on the wall.
The coolers run at 36 degrees and the cooler behind the boat is 34.The glycol temps were normal at 29 degrees. The pressures have not been changed but there was an issue 2 weeks ago that I am leaning toward being some part of the problem. Someone shut the heaters off in the coolers on a night when it was 30+ below zero. The bartender found this out when all the beers started to stop one at a time. He turned the heaters on and by the end of the night they started pouring again. None of the kegs froze but in the process of thawing things out a heat lamp melted a gas line. The next day the owner fount that and fixed it himself. The 6 lines that are not working are not in the same cooler or part of the same trunkline.
What I'm wondering is, can some part of any system be damaged by extreme cold, such as regulators or fobs. I thought maybe when the gas line melted losing all the pressure maybe the kegs just went flat and the mixed gas didn't have enough co2 in it to bring them back but some of the kegs have been changed since then.
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Old 02-20-2007, 09:18 AM
wineglow wineglow is offline
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It is possible some of the lines are frozen in the trunk --- Sometimes lines closest to the glycol lines will freeze the light beers. Also check the check ball in the keg couplers.
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Old 02-20-2007, 02:34 PM
Buck Buck is offline
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Went back today and only 3 were foamy. Replaced one older coupler that had a dent in the seal,now only 2 are foamy ( more like cloudy). I think the beers were frozen longer than he told me. The budweiser was real cloudy even after the foam settled.
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Old 02-20-2007, 05:41 PM
Beer Dr Beer Dr is offline
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I was feeling bad about our 16" of snow last week, thats nothing compared to 30 below, where are you so I never go there in the winter!
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Old 03-08-2007, 05:03 PM
mctripj mctripj is offline
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hey buck, where are you located? i dont hear about temps like that too much except for up here in alaska. anyway, with those lines and everything freezing (which i have had to deal with up here alot) there can be any number of problems.
with the cloudy bud: when kegs freeze, beer tends to separate. to properly thaw a keg you have to have it in a cooler so it will slowly thaw over about 3 days. each day as it thaws you turn the keg over once so the beer will mix back together.
also, other foaming may occur from the freeze. as we know liquid expands and plastic hardens when they freeze. i have seen lines that have an almost microscopic crack in them from the beer freezing in it and expanding just enough in the hardened line.
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Old 03-12-2007, 05:33 PM
Scott Zuhse Scott Zuhse is offline
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Additionally, be certain that you have gas supplies for the blender. The McDantim blender will sut down if one of the supplies empties. Other than that, where are you located with that temperature extreme?
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