Beer engine hand pump check valve

Hi!

First of all, my apologies if this has been asked before. I´ve been looking for this issue in the forum and found nothing.

Thing is we have a nice Angram hand pump installed in a pub in NW Spain. Casks are not so usual here (not at all...), so we had only tapped a couple of Fuller´s that we got in special events. Also some local spanish micro-breweries can provide us cask ale.
So we decided to adapt the hand pump to turn it into a regular beer tap, so we can use pressurized kegs. We already have a check valve/ demand valve installed, and it seems to work properly, but the problem is that we get too much froth, so much we have to wait for a while for the foam to go down and then refill the glass. When we try to serve the same beer via a regular beer tap, we get no foam problems, so we guess this is not a beer overcarbonation problem but an installation one.

This is the check valve we use:
http://www.ewlonline.co.uk/mk2-check-valve-3-8-jg-in-1-2-stem-c-w-brk

The check valve is installed quite close to the pump, less than 10 inches. Keg pressure is set to the minimum (around 0,3 bar, this is around 5 psi), and the whole beer line, from coupler to pump, via beer cooler, is 3/8" diameter (except the valve outlet and pump inlet, where we use John Guest adaptors)

Any tip on how we can get less froth? We will aprreciate any help, since we have little experience dealing with hand pumps, and its hard to find someone in Spain who does.

Cheers,
David

The keg beer is almost certainly over carbonated for use with a hand pump. The mechanical action of the pump will cause the frothing.
Hand pumps are only designed to work with low carbonated cask beer. The check valve is only really there to stop the pressure from a cask mounted above the height of the pump and prevent the beer being forced through.
You coul try turning the gas pressure right down to see if it helps

Dads_Ale said:

The keg beer is almost certainly over carbonated for use with a hand pump. The mechanical action of the pump will cause the frothing.
Hand pumps are only designed to work with low carbonated cask beer. The check valve is only really there to stop the pressure from a cask mounted above the height of the pump and prevent the beer being forced through.
You coul try turning the gas pressure right down to see if it helps

Click to expand...

Thanks for your answer. Yes, we were aware of this, so we though about depresurizing the keg prior to tapping.
We have seen hand pumps pouring keg beer in some places, and we thought there may be some key aspects to look for that we are not aware of.
Anyway, there´s a couple of local micro breweries close to us that can provide us with cask ale if we order in advance, so maybe this is the best option for us.

Cimmeria said:

Thanks for your answer. Yes, we were aware of this, so we though about depresurizing the keg prior to tapping.
We have seen hand pumps pouring keg beer in some places, and we thought there may be some key aspects to look for that we are not aware of.
Anyway, there´s a couple of local micro breweries close to us that can provide us with cask ale if we order in advance, so maybe this is the best option for us.

Click to expand...

Hi David,
We are in a similar situation with a few pubs in Russia.
Did you eventually find any solution?

Here we sometimes serve beer from KeyKegs through handpulls, connecting it without gas, leaving the gas inlet of the KeyKeg coupler open.
It helps to use a larger ID (inside diameter) hose and making it as short as possible. The longer the hose, the more froth you get. So it's best to position your handpulls as close to the cellar/coolroom as possible. If the keg sits under the bar, we connect via a cooler. It keeps the length of the hose to a minimum, but note that there's about 10 meters of tube (and of small ID) inside the cooler that the beer runs through while cooling, which doesn't help matters. However, this is short enough line to keep the frothing to a more or less acceptable level.

Serving from a KeyKeg also ensures there's no contact of extraneous gas with beer, so it's served pretty much like real ale, although there's no secondary fermentation in the KeyKeg of course, so it's not exactly cask ale. It does taste much more similar to cask ale though, compared to standard keg beer served with gas.

There're a couple of issues when connecting a KeyKeg to a beer engine you need to consider.
Firstly, when you connect a new KeyKeg, the initial pressure in the inner bag is so big that the beer would run from the beer engine even when it's not operated. A check valve normally solves the problem, but sometimes we have to use a tap for shorter lines (at the bar end of the line next to the handpull within easy reach). John Guest make such taps for any standard-sized tubes. It's best to close it overnight and in any case the beer starts running from the engine after a new keg is connected (the problem disappears after a few litres are poured from the keg and the pressure goes down).
The second problem is that when the KeyKeg is half empty or less, it becomes difficult to pull from it by hand with no gas helping to push the beer through the line. This is solved by putting the keg on the side or (when it's close to empty) just turning it upside down, which allows for the beer to flow freely from the KeyKeg into the hose and on to the beer engine. Watch out for the hose not to get bended when the keg is upside down on the floor or a shelf - you'll need to arrange for some sort of support leaving the space in the middle for the coupler and outcoming hose to fit in.

Cheers,
Yuri

Also, I know of imitation beer engines redesigned to serve keg beer under gas pressure. They look exactly like traditional handpulls, but work somewhat differently. I've been told they are merely on/off taps designed to make an impression you are pulling a beer. An unconfirmed opinion I've heard suggests there's no cylinder inside, so it can't be used to actually pump cask beer without gas pushing the beer into this mock engine. This is all unconfirmed though and I'm not sure how it works. All I know is it works perfectly with keg beer and gas.
I will try and find out more. In fact, we'll try and see if it can pull water from a bucket with no gas pressure. I know the pub owner, so it shouldn't be a problem to run some tests, although I don't think he'll approve of me disassembling the device to see how it works

Cimmeria said:

...
The check valve is installed quite close to the pump, less than 10 inches. Keg pressure is set to the minimum (around 0,3 bar, this is around 5 psi), and the whole beer line, from coupler to pump, via beer cooler, is 3/8" diameter (except the valve outlet and pump inlet, where we use John Guest adaptors)

Click to expand...

By the way, how long is this line you have from coupler to pump (not including the cooler)?
And is that a python (cooled) line?

Hi Yuri,

We´ve been working for more than a year with the installation described above. Thing is focus in carbonation. We normally tap kegs of any classic british ale, wich are normally undercarbonated (compared to others). We get a bit of froth during the first pourings, and then it gets flatter. It just about waiting, letting the pints rest for a while. We´ve been tapping keykegs also. Same rule, if you think it is overcarbonated, just desprresurize it a bit.
Of course, a check valve is mandatory.

Cheers

Ahh, pity I missed this thread first time around. Anyway, here's my ramblings from that time:

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=60134&page=3

And a quick link to my "treatise", which was actually only finished last April:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwzEv5tRM-5EQUhZbDNPdmV1bWc

Should be more information than you might expect. It would be interesting to know that the information was being used abroad and commercially!