flow control tap for mini keg

[Begbie]

Anyone got further updates on their flow control disconnect? Any successes?

I connected mines to pour my Chocolate Oatmeal Stout 2 weeks ago and it poured quite frothy, but not too bad. It took two or three pours to get a pint. I was pouring at about 5 psi with the valve opened only about a 1/4 turn.

Last night, was the first pour of my Weissbier from my second mini keg. Very frothy. I think the difference could be that I misread the FG and kegged too early, so fermentation was still going on, plus I primed the keg with a sugar solution for natural carbonation. It is overly carbonated. When I put the regulator on the keg, the needle shot into the red at about 25psi. I depressurised to 8psi then 5psi as the small Stella glass I was using was about 95% foam. Took about 5 or 6 pours to get a glassful.

If this continues to be a trend, I might need to look at other means to dispense, as it's too much hassle, although I do think this latest frothy carryon is due to over-carbonation.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I looked at this a while back, and concluded that the problem comes when the carbonated beer flows suddenly past a constriction in the line (e.g. a partly opened tap). This tends to result in a very localised pressure drop which causes the CO2 to dissolve out at that point resulting in foaming - and once the line is full of foam you're knackered.

So IMHO if that's the problem then you've basically got two options: (1) use a tap that's carefully designed internally, to avoid the pressure drop all happening in one place; and/or (2) arrange for the pressure to have already reduced quite a bit before the beer reaches the tap - e.g. by feeding the tap via a length of really small diameter tubing (which drops the pressure when the beer is flowing).

The light dawned for me when I switched to transparent tubing for my feed from the keg to the tap, at which point is became obvious that there were no bubbles in the 3/8" line upstream of the tap (because it was all basically at keg pressure) and the problem was all occurring in the tap.