Over carbonated cornie

[inthedark]

Hi

I can't seem to get carbonation right in my cornies so I can dispense using a beer engine. I get a huge glass of froth and flat beer. I feel there's a bit of a conflict between using enough pressure to seal the keg and keeping it low enough so that it's not over carbed.

Any ideas how to get around this?

[Jim]

I feel your pain - I had exactly the same problem and never found a solution that worked for me (though others report that they've managed to do it).

You can get a red seal that will seal at a lower pressure than the supplied black one - maybe 4 - 5 psi. That would be a good start.

Part of the problem might be the small diameter of the liquid tube inside the cornie, but I don't know for sure. I was using a demand valve between the cornie and the BE, which may also have contributed to the problem, as it does tend to agitate the beer. It works fine with a plastic pressure barrel though.

There have been a few threads about this:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59660&p=627407&hili ... rs#p627407

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18130&start=0&hilit ... ne+banging

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=34164&hilit=engine+cornie

There may be more, but I can't find them at the moment.

[Deebee]

I can't help with the beer engine part.

I had a spate of overcarbonation of my cornies though. Found out it was basically due to adding too much priming sugar ( i think beer tastes better when it is primed as oposed force carbonated but thats just me); or that i had temperature issues with my fermentation resulting in incomplete fermentation etc.

With the overcarbonated cornies i found that the only way was to vent them off then add gas until i hade the flow rate i wanted.

I also uses CO2 to seal the kegs. I have found that a smearing of vaseline on the O ring allows me to seal the keg, then vent all of the gas out without the seal lostening. I know some have managed to seal and vent ( without vaseline) and still maintain the seal.

I have my set up pretty much ok now. The priming of the keg gets most of the beer out, although i still need to vent if i have not tapped from a keg for a while.

Hope this is of some use to you.

[inthedark]

Thanks Dave, I may have to look at using vaseline or similar to help with sealing at lower pressures.

For now I've come to a workable system using the beer engine when I know I've got people coming round to sample the wares. After reading the CAMRA 'Cellarmanship' book, I decided to try venting the keg as if it were a cask, using a spare gas disconnect in place of a soft spile.

After 2-3 days the beer settles down enough to allow use of the beer engine, and after the session I add CO2 at low pressure (not worried about the seal) to keep it drinkable over the next week or so. If I'm not going to get through it in that time I just fully gas it back up at 20psi to seal and do it all again when I'm ready to finish it. Seems to be working for me.

[Deebee]

Thanks Dave, I may have to look at using vaseline or similar to help with sealing at lower pressures.

For now I've come to a workable system using the beer engine when I know I've got people coming round to sample the wares. After reading the CAMRA 'Cellarmanship' book, I decided to try venting the keg as if it were a cask, using a spare gas disconnect in place of a soft spile.

After 2-3 days the beer settles down enough to allow use of the beer engine, and after the session I add CO2 at low pressure (not worried about the seal) to keep it drinkable over the next week or so. If I'm not going to get through it in that time I just fully gas it back up at 20psi to seal and do it all again when I'm ready to finish it. Seems to be working for me.

<you might want to check that the seal holds anyway. i sometimes just use the c02 to get a seal then vent as i use yeast and priming to carbonate. Vever failed to get beer out so i must have a seal enough to keep the produced co2 in...