Clogged keg (full)

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This happened to me, twice. It is a real pain in the ar$e. Both times it was hop debris clogging up the dip tube and poppet. I had to rethink my racking procedure. I now drain the FV from fitted tap but secure a fine mesh bag around the other end of the syphon tube. So far, so good.
 
Something that might be worth investing in is universal posts. I bought a couple in case I needed to shoot gas down the dip tube but without the aggro of having to swap the disconnects. This does depend a bit on what sort of disconnects you have. I have the ones with the barbed end. If you have screw-in ones, it's less of a faff.

The tall keg took the universal post no problem. The short keg, not so much. It went on and I tightened it as much as I could but there was still a leak.
 
first time ive encounted it and ive brewed many hop bombs. i think it was down to longer conditioning- effectively cold crashing in the keg for a month. Don't cold crash in FV as i worry about oxygen getting in.
 
Cold crashing in the Fv will not IMO cause any problems, it is a pretty standard procedure by most brewers. If you do it in the keg you do risk it happening again and at least you know what to do.
 
OK one problem has lead to another it seems and now i am a confused to feck.

Went back last night to pull a beer and clogged again- fair enough. so in order to remove post and dip again i first made sure turned the gas supply off via the regulator off and tried to release gas through the gas release valve.

As the regulator turned off loads of beer shot up the gas line flooding out of the regulator and when i tried to release gas from the release vale on keg loads of Beer cam up through that too.

when nothing more came out of release valve i removed the post and dip Tube loads more spouted out but i replaced with fresh one.

what i dont undertsand is why all the beer shot up the gas line and buggered my regulator? Can anyone through any light on this.
 
ok thanks for feedback. when i changed the post over after iitial blockage i was able to turn off gas without incident, which makes me possibly discount the above- unless the pressure was greater this time?
 
When you say you turned off the gas, do you mean you turned it off at the mains or dropped the psi to zero?
 
When you say you turned off the gas, do you mean you turned it off at the mains or dropped the psi to zero?

yes, turned it the PSI down to zero, and then released pressure from the keg valve. it was ok at first with the valve on the regulator releasing excess gas as i turned it down to zero as usual. Not sure exactly when the beer started coming out of it- that is to say if it was before i opened the valve on the keg or after.

But it ended up with beer foam coming out of both release valves.
 
No, it can't. That's why the beer out dip tube picks up from the bottom of the keg, and the gas in comes from the top.

If your beer tap is higher than the bottom of the dip tube, then its is pressure overcoming gravity to dispense- no?
 
Very quickly dropping the psi can make beer go up the line, towards the reg. It happened to me the other night when I was force carbing. Now I did have the gas going down the liquid out post but I have also seen it happen when using the gas on the correct post.
 
If your beer tap is higher than the bottom of the dip tube, then its is pressure overcoming gravity to dispense- no?

That's not the context that we're talking about though. You said that beer came out of the gas post and into your regulator. Unless the level of the beer in the keg was too high, that can't happen, because gravity.

Edit - if you were force carbing and the keg was on its side, and you were rocking it about, you might have collected a bunch of foam in the gas dip tube. When you turned the gas off on the cylinder, the pressure in the keg shoots that foam up the gas line and into your reg.

Maybe disconnect the quick connect from the keg, then switch off the gas at the cylinder. Then no matter what happens, you can't get beer up the gas line.
 
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If I am force carbing, I find I have to leave the gas connected and drop the psi VERY slowly. If I remove the gas disconnect and drop the psi from 30 to 10, let's say, as soon as I reconnect the gas, the psi shoots right back to 30.

If you used the gas on the wrong post first, it is possible you picked up some beer in the line before switching it back to the correct post.
 
Very quickly dropping the psi can make beer go up the line, towards the reg. It happened to me the other night when I was force carbing. Now I did have the gas going down the liquid out post but I have also seen it happen when using the gas on the correct post.

thats likely it- dropped it very quickly from 30 - 0, at room temp too.

I hope ive got them on the wrong posts as that will be the problem identified. If i havn't not sure how to ensure it doesnt happen again- i was under impression the gas fitting were one way only! searching around i found another thread where you can fit a one one jobbie in-line so may have to go that route!
 
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