Im at a loss (keg issue)

[BogWater]

Im at a loss as to whats happening to one of my beers. Its a fairly mild stout that we aged in some barrel from a local distillery. Came out awesome and we were able to get an account in town to put it on there. No issues from the first account through a couple kegs of it. and no issues here in our taproom either.

Well we had another account request it and when they went to put it on. It was a straight gusher, now that account is a really wonky setup they are using cooler kegerators and one CO2 regulator for 14 beers, also the coolers double as their food storage so the temp in there is god knows what on a daily basis with all the opening and closing. I also remember when I dropped off the keg they put in the back but werent able to cool it right away so i dont know how long it sat out and warmed up.

Anyways i say all that because when i went there I was like ok its an issue with their equipment because the other place and ours have no issue what so ever. So i bring the keg back to our brewery and let it sit overnight and hook it up the next morning to see if its fine, well it wasnt it foams just as bad as it did at their place. And now im getting a couple others that have been in our storage from the same batch that are foaming like mad as well. I dont know what is going on i thought maybe i had a bad connection coupler to keg but it really is just random kegs of it doing this. Is it infected? thats all my mind is going to but if it was why hasnt this happened earlier?

Any insight would great thanks!

[briangaylor]

Are the foaming ones only kegs that were stored warm for some period of time? Maybe an infection is to blame and the continuous cold storage is masking that for some accounts.

[BogWater]

Its hard for me to know exactly what happens to the kegs even in our own taproom (im the only employee of the brewery, but the taproom is controlled by the winery the same owner has, so they come and take kegs out of the brewery when im not there and sell them to the winery) so if im not here like most weekends i dont have any knowledge of how the kegs were handled. But its literally 100ft from brewery to winery taproom and they dont pull kegs unless they run out over there. We did have a cooler issue a couple weeks back and it got to around 50F in there but the kegs were still cold to the touch and i dont think they got warm enough before we were able to get the cooler running again and back down to storage temp.

The other account that has been fine is a keeps it in a cooler and has a setup much like ours with taps straight from the coldroom so maybe thats what has been saving them.

I dont know some kegs are just full on foam, others that also foam do so but they cascade out to beer eventually. Its very weird almost like two different types of foam in the glass as well. Its like big bubbles on the bottom and very tight head towards the top of the glass different colors as well.

[briangaylor]

One thing you could check for is the keg sealing correctly - sometimes the spear or attachment will be warn/warped enoght that it lets a tiny bit of air in right as the beer is leaving the keg and causes crazy foam. If you already have that one bad keg back in your brewery tear it down and rebuild the top of it. May not have a good impact on the shelf life of the beer, but if you have already written it off it would be a good quick test to see if it was a keg or beer issue.

Also - check this thread:

http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?50319-FOB-issues&highlight=foaming

Brian

[BogWater]

I've read that as well. I have been noticing some strange noises when cleaning some kegs recently. Like a screeching when I'm flushing out the solution with CO2 but a simple shake of the keg and it goes away.

Think I'm having issues with the kegs themselves?

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[briangaylor]

Maybe you are leaking pressure from the keg - I would swap whatever hardware you can into the keg that is currently 'bad' and if the hardware swap fixes it, you know it wasnt a beer issue. If the hardware swap doesnt fix it you have 2 possibilities, the beer is bad or the keg itself has an issue outside of the 'swappable' hardware.

Make sure to test it on one of your lines that has not had any issues to remove that variable from the equation.

[BogWater]

Ok thanks I'll try that out see if I can nail down a culprit.

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[BogWater]

One thing when I switch to another line to start. Rule out the easiest stuff first. If the beer is infected wouldn't it infect the line?

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[briangaylor]

I would give whatever line you use a good cleaning afterwards if you determine the keg was not the culprit. This may be a good opportunity to clean the lines regardless

[BogWater]

haha agreed ill suggest it, like i said i only run the brewery side. Im pretty much a glorified production brewery with one main account at the moment.

[BogWater]

Ok so i went to check the beer line to see if there was any separation occurring and the line is solid beer but there is beer around the keg stem which i have never seen before also i went to pour some more and after pouring the tap was still dripping but steady like something was pushing through....could it be a bad tap handle with a bad
keg seal?

[TGTimm]

Beer around the keg stem... you mean leaking from where the coupler plugs into the stem?

Generally, this indicates a problem with the keg coupler (tap, tavern head) seals. Depending on the brand and style of coupler (I'm most familiar with Sanke D style), there are a few seal that can leak, and some can cause bad foaming problems.

If the beer is leaking from around the coupler, and not from atop the stem of the coupler or one of the beer nuts, it's one or the other or both of the bottom seals on the coupler. The big seal on the outside of the bottom of the coupler fails fairly fast, as it gets rotated into place under pressure when you tap the keg, and is usually dry at the time. These are easy to replace--just be sure it's the right one for your coupler!

For now, try replacing the coupler--if this fixes the problem, you know what to replace.

If changing the coupler doesn't help, it's time to pull a spear. There should be a thread here somewhere called something like "rebuilding keg valves" or "rebuilding a spear" or something. Good instructions there. We get replacement parts from your keg supplier (Eurosouce in our case). Micromatic sells tools for removing and rebuilding a spear, but there's one you'll have to make yourself (instructions in aforementioned thread). Again, be sure the parts and tools are the right ones for your keg spears and valves. Good news is that there are only two change-out parts in a spear valve, the o-ring that seals it to the keg stem, and the valve seal itself (big black rubber bit on top of the spear valve).

I think I'm changing spear valve rubber about every year, depending on how much use a keg has, and how it's been treated and stored after use (sunlight really eats that valve seal--look for cracks). Hard to say, but I know most of the really big guys change these parts yearly--you can even get color-coded valve seals to keep track.

[JustinDCrawford]

Your comment about how the head looks makes me want to suggest secondary fermentation, I think something might have got into those kegs. If it's only a couple of them look back at the history of the keg itself. Is it possible that they did not get cleaned properly?

[BogWater]

Just an update we pulled the defective kegs. We determined that the ones who were foamy and wierd had either been left out to get warm by the account we had them at and also due to a cooler failure in our taproom. The ones kept in the breweries cold room the entire time haven't exhibited any of the other symptoms. I think it's fair to say secondary ferm was happening. So live and learn we are revisiting our procedures for everything involved in the transfer of beer to the barrels and the kegs being cleaned.

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