Beer line

[Rob Wilson]

Trying to get the pressure right out of a corny keg, we currently have a beer tap directly out of the top of the corny , would it be better if we had a few metres of beer line between the two?

 

[Ossiary]

Hi Rob, I started off with the same setup and found that the keg pressure needed to be pretty low to stop foaming at the tap. What level of carbonation were you looking to achieve in the beer, and what sort of beer?

 

[Ossiary]

I now have between 1 and 2m of 3/16” beer line to allow balancing of keg pressure for higher carb brews like Wheat beers or lager and control foaming.

 

[AnimatedGIF]

As @Ossiary says, a length of 3/16 would work well. That's what I have, albeit as part of a keezer. There are also flow control taps you could consider but I have no experience of them. The reason I use balanced line (i.e the length of 3/16) is because I can't be faffing around dropping to "serving pressure" every time I want a beer. I simply leave the pressure as required to carb the beer and have a length of 3/16 as appropriate - there are calculators out there to help determine the required length.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Have a look at this
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/beer-line.94844/#post-1047194

 

[LeeH]

Just use a tap with flow control.

 

[MickDundee]

My first setup was a 10L keg with keg mounted tap. It was fine, but every session I had to reduce the pressure to about 2PSI, and then bump it up to 12PSI when I finished for the night.

You could use flow control taps but I’ve no experience of them (my current setup has balanced lines).

 

[Ossiary]

During the research before building my Kegerator I came across a few articles which suggested that flow control at the tap is not as useful as flow control at the Keg Liquid Disconnect. Apparently gas is already knocked out of solution by the time it gets to the tap so flow control there is of limited use? Not saying it’s correct, just that the opinion exists. There are a few available, including a really nice Keg Kingdom Stainless Steel version which is very shiny and brings out the Magpie in me! I resisted and went with line length instead.

 

[Rob Wilson]

Thanks guys for the reply looking into 2m of 3/16 beer line setup.