King Keg bottom tap pressure

[mrcpea]

I have a barrel of Coopers English bitter that I made up to 21.5 litres. I bottled 6 pints and put the rest in a KK bottom tap barrel and primed with around 90grams of sugar (mixed with a little boiled water, then cooled)
The ale has been in the barrel now for around 6 weeks.
On the first glassful poured, I noticed that the pressure was no where near as good as my other KK bottom tap with Wilko golden ale in.
What I get from this barrel is a nice clear pint with a fairly loose foamy head, rather that a tight creamy one like the other barrel. The beer tastes superb, albeit a little flat . I have injected co2 from a cylinder (s30) and the pressure is still only OK and slowly getting worse. The barrel is just about half way down now. The bottled stuff is lovely.

Also I noticed a weird thing in my opinion.
I noticed some air in the top of the tap (The cylindrical bit where it goes into the barrel) YET there seems to be NO leak of beer at all! Like the tap is somehow sucking air in! Anyone else had this. I slowly rocked the barrel backwards, and the air went into the barrel. This morning there was more air in the same place!
This is the first brew from this barrel. I'm no novice to brewing and done a few barrels with no real problem before.

Any one shed some light on this. I'd be very grateful.

Many thanks

Richard

 

[Worrywort]

Are you sure it is air in the tap?
I do get a build up of co2 in the tap which is released by tipping the barrel forwards, I think this is co2 coming out of the beer as the pressure goes down

 

[mrcpea]

Are you sure it is air in the tap?
I do get a build up of co2 in the tap which is released by tipping the barrel forwards, I think this is co2 coming out of the beer as the pressure goes down

Well, Many thanks for that, I didn't realise that this is what could be happening.
I will keg my Coopers stout tomorrow in my 3rd keg :-)

Thanks again,

Richard