trouble with keg brew

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APINTA

APINTA

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I am sorry to bother the forum again I would like some advice again please. I brewed 40 pints off Muttons oak ale when it had finished I then transferd it to a keg on the 1st of Feb. I thought I would give it a try today there was awful lot of froth and it took time to clear and the beer was cloudy. shouldent it cleared by now and why am i getting a load of froth when I poured a glass please see photo. Is it a case of pouring away which i hope not the first photo is straight from the keg the second photo is about a minute afterwards

20170219_155901.jpg


20170219_160032.jpg
 
Hi
Can you just confirm what type of keg? i.e. is it a pressure barrel?
If a PB then I suspect the co2 pressure is quite high causing the sediment to stir up and giving the froth.
The pressure will drop as you pour more beer which should cure both of the above. Trouble is with a PB you have no indication of the pressure which puts you on a back foot straight away.
Which is why I do not use PBs without a DIY pressure gauge :smile:
 
Loads of froth is typical of pressure barrels. As the pressure drops as the level of beer goes down you get less froth until the pressure runs out half way down the barrel. So you then have to re-prime it and start again or use CO2 capsules.
You could pour into a jug first, let it stand a few minutes then transfer to a glass.
 
Crack the tap ever so slightly with the pint pot positioned directly beneath it. Then pretend it's 1973 or summat and you're waiting for some hand-pulled Tetley. Return 20 minutes later and the glass will be almost full and with a head which has been subsiding at the same rate that the glass has been filling. Failing that,open the cap or safety valve carefully to discharge some gas to the atmosphere, then give it a few days to stabilise.
 
there is a knack, art, or skill involved with pouring a pint from a pressure barrel.
they are a 'jack of all trades' solution emulating a storage, dispense, and pressure maintaining system in a single unit, and as you pour pints the conditions inside the barrel change. And its the conditions in the barrel ( temperature, pressure and level of condition in the beer...) that dictate how the tap behaves when you crack it.

some folk find fitting a dalex style lever tap works much better you just need to source a threaded bush to resize the barrel thread fitting down to 1/2" bsp. the dalex taps open fully without creating the turbulance that can cause co2 to 'shake' out of suspension.
 
I have a Pressure valve I just tried it and it reads 00 which can not be right My keg has a Schneider valve and I use a bike pressure gauge ( or rather that is what Ballyhoo gives you with the Keg ) When I keged the beer it read 5psi and i checked just a few minutes ago that is when it read 00 so if it is reading 0.0 i should not have all that froth should I? Also should the beer start to clear now? or could it be a faulty meter
 
balliihoo_4inch_cap_set_2.png


like this??

test for pressure by slightly depressing the tyre valve central pin, if its still n silent the gauge is probably ok.. and u have no pressure so top it up.. :)

you can always test the gauge on any tyres too ;)
 
You don't need pressure gauges on simple PBs. It's something else to go wrong and the hole in the cap/gauge itself is a source of leaks.
What you need is common sense, which, as my old maths teacher used to say many years ago ago, 'is a rare commodity'.
1. If you prime using sugar you don't put too much in or it will take forever to dispense your beer through the foam blanket. If you don't put enough in you will quickly lose the pressure driving force as you draw beer from the PB. And if you overprime you will lose CO2 through the PRV.
2. If you use bulbs you top up as required. Same as cylinders only you have more control.
3. And if you don't get pressure when you expect it you have a leak somewhere.
4. And of course if you do have a gauge and it says zero and the barrel is obviously pressurised there's something wrong with the gauge. So what, you can dispense beer.
So, common sense coupled with what you see and expect, what could be simpler?
 
APINTA said:
the beer was cloudy.
Click to expand...
If you put cloudy beer into your PB there is a chance that it won't clear properly until you draw more pressure off. The cloudier the beer the worse it can be.
The solution to this is to leave your beer longer in the FV, at least 14 days or longer if need be, to allow it to fully 'clear' before you package it, even though the vigorous fermentation may have finished days ago. Even though it appears clear, your beer should still contain enough yeast cells to carbonate, it may just take a while longer that's all.
 
Thank you all your experts I have now tried to pour a glass of beer and the froth is down too a minimum so it must be a leak somewhere but It was OK last week I left it and the beer done its own pressure and when pouring the beer today it suddenly goes after a couple of pints I do not know how it could happen
 
I hardly ever open the tap all the way.

When pouring from the pressure barrel i open the tap to just over half way where I can hear the difference in the pour and build a bit of froth in the glass, when happy with the head I reduce the flow to a trickle (unfortunately) but where the sound changes and there's no froth coming from the barrelevant and finish filling my glass.

https://youtu.be/LOq6N59HTjo

Shows a pretty good pour.

Where has your barrel been since the 1st? Clarity happens when stored somewhere cool, which is why the general consensus is 2 weeks fermentation, 2 weeks carbing at fermentation temp then 2 weeks conditioning at a cooler temperature.

Hope future pints pour better.
 
My keg has been siting n a cupboard downstairs and the temp it says 16c on the side of the barrel
 
i refer you to the carbing chart i linked to earlier, check it out and you will see @16c the beer is unlikely to hold much condition at all under the sort of max pressure a pb can contain (10ish psi? they vary quite a bit!!)

PBs are great for lower conditioned brews (think cask ale) but anything you want to end up highly conditioned (fizzy) needs to be conditioned in bottles or real kegs that can contain. more pressure.

when naturally conditioning with a priming charge you need to maintain a warm temp for the yeast to create the co2, But then to get the best out of the brew ideally you want to chill it to serving temp and allow the pressure built up from the conditioning to push more condition back into the beer and reach a temp/pressure equilibrium ;)
 

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