If you are not quite certain as to your beer's carbonation level or temperature and find yourself without a thermometer, there is still hope in determining your keg pressure. A flashlight can be used to determine if your beer's gas content is staying put with the applied CO₂ pressure to the keg.

It is not an exact science although you will be surprised to how accurate it can be. It will not correct a warm tower issue. This test works best on a fresh keg that has acclimated to your kegerator. A risk would be to go overboard and increase the pressure to far, causing over carbonation of your beer. A dim flashlight will not cut it.

Follow these steps:

1. After turning your regulator shut- off to the off position, reduce your pressure to a low five to six PSIG (pounds per square inch gauge).
2. Couple your keg and then relieve the keg head pressure using the coupler's safety relief valve.
3. Turn the regulator shut-off on pressurizing the keg.
4. Open the faucet for one second and close. Immediately shine your flashlight through your beer line just above the coupler. You may see a couple of large bubbles rising. Do not pay much attention to these. Look for very fine, small bubbles that are rising out of the top of the coupler through your line. This is the actual gas in the beer breaking out.
5. Raise your pressure one to two pounds and and after a few minutes, repeat step four. You should notice that the break out of the gas bubbles are becoming less frequent. You are becoming close to what is called gas equilibrium. But if you still see the bubbles, you are not quite there.
6. Repeat step five and continue this procedure until gas bubbles no longer rise out of the top of the coupler. Be careful not to raise the pressure to high. Once the gas bubbles disappear, you can be assured that the pressure you are applying to the keg is keeping the beer's carbonation where it belongs - in the beer!

You will be surprised to find out that you will stop raising pressure right around 13 to 14 PSIG if your beer temperature is 38 degrees Fahrenheit and you are working with a 2.6 gas volume beer. Most certainly it would be much easier knowing your beer temperature using a calibrated thermometer and the carbonation level. Not necessarily the case all of the time.

As usual, the keg must be acclimated to your system before you perform this test. Be aware that it can take hours for a keg's temperature to drop - even a couple of degrees. If you attempt this test, let us know how it worked out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Carbonation, Dispense. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.