foamy beer on first pour and also have a tower cooler??? please help clean lines also

[beer bro]

i installed a tower cooler 80mm fan in my keezer and its blowing cold air onto the shanks just great. i thought if i installed the tower cooler the foamy first pour will go away but its still there. the whole tower is sweating cold but my per lick faucets are not sweating cold are they supposed to be???? and the first pore i make is still foamy i don't know whats going on after i make the first pore the faucet is ice cold??? can anyone please help me out??? the co2 pressure is not that high either its at 8 psi.

[djc]

The cooler is keeping the tower cool, but it will not get the faucets cold enough to sweat. Once you pour a beer the cold beer flowing through the faucet makes it sweat just the way the beer makes the glass sweat. The first touch of flow in a session might be foam. If you keep pouring on that foam, it can continue to make more foam. You can get over that by using a second glass to catch the first shot of foam, or by gulping the first shot and using the same glass. You don't mention the beer or temperature, but it is also possible that you are not balanced.

[beer bro]

it shoots out foam about 1 or 2 seconds on the first pour and then a good flow after that. some people are telling me to switch to a 10 foot long beer line and that will fix it. is your kegerator like this or is your 1st pour always perfect? i will try the gulping thing also. its just a pain on the *** when friends come over and pour a beer and talk **** thats all foam and i have a ***** kegerator which i don't. then the faucet cools down after you drink you beer and have to repeat the gulping think you were saying. there has to be a way to fix this

[cubby_swans]

To pour beer you need to balance the system properly. You don't have a bad kegerator. I have one of the worst kegerators you can buy and it pours beer perfectly every time. What you have is an unbalanced draft beer system. It is not plug and play. From your first post, I will go out on a short limb and tell you that 8psi is likely too low. Setting the pressure too low allows carbonation to break out of solution and cause a ton of foam.

You need to tell us the details of what you have going to get some help here.

what beer are you serving?
what is the temperature of the beer? (need to take the temperature of the beer in the glass with a calibrated thermometer)
what altitude above sea level do you live at?
what is the internal diameter and length of the beer line?

[KillianBoy]

beer bro,
I wasn't going to respond but I had to edit some language, and since I was here I decided to make a couple of comments.
djc did ask for some information, nothing can really be said to help unless you post asked for information.
I concur with djc, I think the PSI is set to low, leading to CO2 breakout which is causing the spurt, but can't be narrowed down until you post the temperature and beer. "Some people" are right 10 foot line should solve some of your problems but if PSI is too low to v/v and temperature, you will never solve the spurt problem.
I disagree with djc about the tower cooler, in a "perfectly" working you should get a little sweat on the faucet (especially with the forward closing faucets) and none on tower. Hose should lead through heavily insulated tower, blow directly on the shank, return air should flow back to unit, without return flow and insulation, the tower will sweat like a guilty perp, which you really don't want. A really sweaty tower can also be a symptom of an improperly mounted tower, air getting in can cause condensation all around tower.
Also other than some salty language, you still have problems with conveying your ideas, I assume you mean "warms" and not cools when you talked about the faucet. Unless your confused, to the fact that the faucet is warm that causes the foam, not the fact that the beer cools it, again if members are confused and uninformed, they can't help you. Also you posted in title "please help clean lines also", do you need help cleaning lines, or help in understanding how to clean and what to clean, again never clarified as what you want.
KB
Cubby beat me to the punch, otherwise I would have posted, "what he said", I wouldn't have edited the post of those extended words of the original 4 letter word if I knew they were allowed but they seemed inappropriate and I don't want to edit a post of another Super Moderator.

[djc]

KB, I'm going to respectfully disagree on the tower sweating. The condensation on the tower is as much about airflow and insulation as it is about ambient conditions. The insulation portion of it is the variable that can be controlled the least effectively, there just isn't much R value you can get in a 2" or 3" tube and still have room for lines and airflow. My unit is in the garage, so it sees conditions from 80 and humid to 40 and dry. When it is 80 and humid, the tower and the 1.5" shanks all the way up to the faucet have condensation on them. Before a pour, the rear most portion of the faucet has a little. After a pour the whole faucet is damp. When it is cooler and dryer there is no condensation. End of the day I've got great pours, and typically do not have to even worry about the first burst in a session as it is just the same as the rest of the beer. I will say with the 10' lines I pour with a little less foam collar, but I am so happy with the flow I'm hesitant to cut back. If anything I may go with 575 creamers in the future to force the head.

[stn]

KB, I'm going to respectfully disagree on the tower sweating. The condensation on the tower is as much about airflow and insulation as it is about ambient conditions. The insulation portion of it is the variable that can be controlled the least effectively, there just isn't much R value you can get in a 2" or 3" tube and still have room for lines and airflow. My unit is in the garage, so it sees conditions from 80 and humid to 40 and dry. When it is 80 and humid, the tower and the 1.5" shanks all the way up to the faucet have condensation on them. Before a pour, the rear most portion of the faucet has a little. After a pour the whole faucet is damp. When it is cooler and dryer there is no condensation. End of the day I've got great pours, and typically do not have to even worry about the first burst in a session as it is just the same as the rest of the beer. I will say with the 10' lines I pour with a little less foam collar, but I am so happy with the flow I'm hesitant to cut back. If anything I may go with 575 creamers in the future to force the head.

My kegerator is on my screen porch and sees a similar variety of weather conditions, and I have the same experience with condensation when it's warm and humid - except that I don't see much condensation on the lower half of the tower. I also still have some foam on the first pour. It's a little more than a burst, more like 2-3 seconds before the beer starts pouring clear. Subsequent pours are fine unless more than 5 minutes or more pass, in which case I get a small amount of initial foam.

I have read all the posts on balancing and know I am balanced (second pour temp with calibrated thermometer, set psi according to brewer's C02 volume, etc.)

I believe the reason I'm getting some first pour foam is that the hole in the top of the unit is small at 1.5", and the beer lines and air line from the tower cooler almost fill it. So I think I'm not getting good circulation back down the tower into the unit, and the beer in the lines inside the tower is probably warming a bit. I've tried insulating the entire tower from the outside, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

I'm going to enlarge the hole to 2.5" to improve airflow in the tower and see what that yields.

In a slight veer off topic, I also get quite a bit of condensation on the edges of the main unit right around the door seal. Sometimes it's to the point of standing water on the front top edge of the kegerator. The unit is less than a year old and the seals make good contact all the way around, but I appear to be losing cold air through the seals nonetheless. I figure the seals just don't insulate that well. If anyone has any thoughts on this or what I can do to improve the insulation that would be great.

For the record, I have a Mar vel double tap that is outdoor rated, 3" tower, modified with per lik 525's, 10 ft beer lines, tower cooler and a general circulation fan.

[beer bro]

this is a reply to cubby swans and to all. the beer i am serving is the bruery mischief. i just put my kitchen thermometer in a plastic arrowhead bottle filled with water to get a reading of the temp inside my keezer. when i pour a pint and then measure the temp its at 40 deg. . also have 2 per lick faucets. i don't know the altitude above sea level where i live. i think its just fine i don't live in the mountains or anything. i live in azusa ca. the internal diameter of my beer line is 3/16 and the length is 5 foot. i just ordered 10 foot long 3/16 inch beer lines from beverage ******* so hopefully that is going to work a lot better

[djc]

Again and again and again, temperature and pressure don't mean anything without the volumes of CO2 from the brewery. In general temperature and pressure vary together - low temp and low pressures for a given v/v, high temp and high pressures for a given v/v. You are at opposite extremes, running a very low pressure and a higher temp. Your system is not balanced. You need to get the v/v, take the proper temp of the beer (not sure what the bottle with water is getting you) and adjust your pressure to that. Wait a day for it to take effect.

[Sketch]

Also you need to be sure you are taking the accurate beer temp - the way you describe it doesn't sound like you are doing it properly.

To learn your beer temp you need: a room temperature glass, a CALIBRATED* kitchen probe thermometer and your kegerator. If your thermometer is not calibrated precisely your readings will be off and you will not be able to balance your system. Even if it's brand new out the package - you should check its calibration.

Step 1: Pour a beer in the glass
Step 2: Dump or chug immediately
(this acclimatizes your glass to the beer temp to give a more accurate reading)
Step 3: Pour a second beer into the SAME glass
Step 4: Insert thermometer into this beer and wait for needle to settle on a number - be sure not to touch the sides or bottom of the glass with the probe.
Step 5: The exact reading you see is your beer temp


* To Calibrate a thermometer:
Fill a glass to the brim with ice.
Fill the glass with water.
Insert thermometer probe into ice water, be sure not to touch the bottom or sides of the glass with the probe.
Once the needle comes to a rest it should read EXACTLY 32 degrees.
If it doesn't, you can now use the calibration adjustment to set it properly, most standard analog kitchen thermometers have a small hex fitting on the underside of the dial; this can be gently turned to adjust the needle.

If you have no way of adjusting the reading you can make a mental note of how many degrees off your thermometer is. For example, if your thermometer reads 29 degrees in the ice water bath, just add 3 degrees to the temperature whenever you use it.

[djc]

Is "super member" new? I don't think I've noticed that before.

[Sketch]

I'm just that awesome.

But in seriousness, it must be new - I just noticed it appeared there a few weeks ago. Not sure if it's based off of the number of posts or what it's all about.

[djc]

The MM gods like you!

Hey Beer Bro, in order to stop the pain I contacted the brewery for you...the v/v you need is 2.6 for Mischief. your altitude is 610ft. You are on your own from here.

[KillianBoy]

Pain is right, still don't know what "please help clean lines also" in title was all about, but whatever.
About tower insulation, I ran 2 1-inch hoses up tower, one blowing on shank, the other for return and beer line, shoved tight up with insulation all around, I did this because owner of unit didn't want the hole opened up for the 2 1/2 inch tower. I used to get massive condensation on the tower here in the middle of the pacific, temperature 80-90 in the day, humidity 50-80, right now there isn't any condensation on the tower, I get pretty good airflow, the only condensation is, just a little on shank/faucet. After I start pouring the condensation does get thicker and more, I guess it all depends on how you have system set up and how high the humidity is, but I have always thought condensation on tower, bad, one I'm losing cold and it causes a mess.
KB

[beer bro]

so what your saying djc v/v 2.6 , is that 12 psi or no. i read the thread about the different volumes and don't understand. sry if your mad or something but i am a newbie and learning .