Force carbonation tips.

[Midlife]

Can anyone give me some tips on getting the right carbonation for colder, lagers American ales from a corney. Currently do ales in my corny and cold beers in bottles... I want to move to just cornys and improve how I get the right carbonation for getting the most out of the beer. I have a temprature controlled fridge so for my ales I have been injecting CO2 etc and useing a CO2 chart for volumes.

I find dispensing the beer it foams a huge amount, so am I missing something on how I draw the beer? I use a standard corny chrome tap? For an ale it's fine, but I get the feeling for a lager it won't have the edge you get from a cold conditioned bottle?

Has anyone got any links for some tips on set ups?

Cheers.

[Dave S]

Can anyone give me some tips on getting the right carbonation for colder, lagers American ales from a corney. Currently do ales in my corny and cold beers in bottles... I want to move to just cornys and improve how I get the right carbonation for getting the most out of the beer. I have a temprature controlled fridge so for my ales I have been injecting CO2 etc and useing a CO2 chart for volumes.

I find dispensing the beer it foams a huge amount, so am I missing something on how I draw the beer? I use a standard corny chrome tap? For an ale it's fine, but I get the feeling for a lager it won't have the edge you get from a cold conditioned bottle?

Has anyone got any links for some tips on set ups?

Cheers.

Here's an american-based chart of pressure settings against temperature. Being American, temperatures are in Farenheit, but it's easy enough to convert.

[Wonkydonkey]

The only thing I can think of is,,, your line length and size for the said volumes of co2 in the beer/lager
I use a flow restricter and drop the size from 3/8 to 3/16 Iirc.

Edit, but what works for me maybe is not that good for you ;9)

[rpt]

Use the chart to get the correct pressure for the temperature and carbonation you want. Then when you dispense you need enough beer line to drop the pressure right down by the time it reaches the tap. The usual way is with a length of 3/16" line.

[f00b4r]

Rather than use reducers and both 3/8 and 3/16 line to drop the line pressure you can use a stem reducer directly in the JG fitting on the disconnect, this allows you to just use 3/16 line for that tap (much more flexible).

[Midlife]

I went for a perlock flow control, mounted to a shank and bracket on my keg. Beer fed through 1m 3/16 beer line. Works an absolute treat, the beer flows so well and does not foam, nice amount of head and the carbonation is in the beer not frothed everywhere!

Thanks for the tips.

[Kev888]

Just a few thoughts:

As already mentioned, balancing the line length/bore to the pressure is important at higher levels of carbonation. Flow control taps can also help, but I found them most useful for making slight adjustments to an already balanced line. 3/16" can be very helpful for shorter, higher pressure runs.

Keeping the beer lines cold is also most helpful. If the beer warms up between keg and tap it will be unable to hold the same amount of gas - as the gas comes out it will foam.

I'd suggest dispensing at the same pressure and temperature balance that the beer was carbonated at. Carbonating according to the charts but then trying to dispense at a different balance will cause said balance to change, and if the dispensing pressure is lower or temperature higher it will also create foam.

Force-carbonating slowly/normally, by using an appropriate pressure/temperature combo for the level of carbonation you want allows it to reach equilibrium at a known level; given sufficient time it will get there and will not go too far with extra time. If you carbonated with a fast method, of applying higher pressure for a limited time, the results are a bit harder to gauge and there may be a bit more trial and error to work out what serving pressure and temperature equates to the carbonation levels you achieved.

Be sure that your FG really is FG, if you carbonate to a high level and then the yeast continues to slowly work and add more it will throw you.

Stability is good. Both temperature and pressure affect the carbonation level or what amount of CO2 the beer can retain; if the temperature changes it can present you with greater challenges, which is one reason why temperature controlled fridges are so popular. The CO2 regulators can mostly take care of keeping the incoming pressure constant, except they're generally poor at dumping excess keg pressure, so won't help as much as one would like if the kegs warm up or if you kegged before FG.