It's Kegging Time 2019

[The Captain!!]

58 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

You mean the "take the old one out and put the new one in"

I will probably have to do some DIY modification on the hole that the beer lines go through to the font to get the flooded font pipe through it, like I did with the old one. Otherwise it's simply longer gas lines partly because the hole appears to be on the other side of the unit, and also I'm gonna screw the manifold to the wall of the cavity the unit sits in so it doesn't bloody move. The double sided tape kept falling off for some reason. 

Exactly, “build” ha ha ha. Still, it’s exciting 

[Otto Von Blotto]

I'm looking forward to properly cold beer again, and I like the auto defrost and built in font fan features, among the other improvements. I know it's a flooded font but I can still use a fan with it. I will keep the pump setup though, never know if I may need it for something else one day. 

[Otto Von Blotto]

New kegerator is all in place and set up with new gas lines and whatever else. It's a little shorter than the old one so a bit of space above it, and plenty of side and back clearance, plus I have a fan gently blowing air behind it to ventilate the rear.

I had to cut out the plastic insert in the top a bit to fit the threaded pipe of the flooded font in, but otherwise simply disconnected and reconnected the lines etc. I've set it to -1 to start with and got my keg of water in with the inkbird to track it. The fridge itself appears to be dropping quite fast, but the keg will obviously be a lot slower.

I decided to put the pale ale keg in as well and carbonate it on serving pressure; whatever that ends up being depends on the keg temperature. Currently it's sitting at 10.8 after sitting out for a while, fridge itself has already dropped 10 degrees from 24 initially, according to the display anyway. I suppose with two semi cold kegs in there it will be a bit easier for it to get cold. 

[Pezzza]

Good luck with your new device Kelsey!  Sounds like it is going the right direction.... 

[Otto Von Blotto]

Down to 8 now. Compressor just kicked back in so should get another few degrees down. More importantly is the keg temperature which I probably won't really know for another day or two when it stabilises. Only other thing I need is some blutak or something to plug the gas line hole up properly. 

Edited September 14, 2019 by Otto Von Blotto

[Pezzza]

6 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Down to 8 now. Compressor just kicked back in so should get another few degrees down. More importantly is the keg temperature which I probably won't really know for another day or two when it stabilises. Only other thing I need is some blutak or something to plug the gas line hole up properly. 

Sikaflex?

[Otto Von Blotto]

11 minutes ago, Bearded Burbler said:

Sikaflex?

Don't think it needs anything that permanent just something to stop air getting out or in. Probably easier to stick it on the outside so I might have to wait until it's empty of kegs again. 

[Pezzza]

42 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Don't think it needs anything that permanent just something to stop air getting out or in. Probably easier to stick it on the outside so I might have to wait until it's empty of kegs again. 

So is that a Kegerator from? 

[Otto Von Blotto]

I got it from keg king, they were on sale $330 fridge only, although I found a CO2 regulator inside it that I wasn't expecting so I'll keep that as a spare in case the one I'm using breaks down or whatever. I'll test out the font fan tomorrow too once everything chills down in there properly. 

[Pezzza]

14 minutes ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

I got it from keg king, they were on sale $330 fridge only, although I found a CO2 regulator inside it that I wasn't expecting so I'll keep that as a spare in case the one I'm using breaks down or whatever. I'll test out the font fan tomorrow too once everything chills down in there properly. 

Sounds like a good result!

[Otto Von Blotto]

For sure. 

[Marty_G]

14 hours ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

I found a CO2 regulator inside it that I wasn't expecting so I'll keep that as a spare

or get a cheap second 2.6 kg bottle  ... i have a second bottle and it is super handy, that is what I use to keep the CO2 up to my kegs that are sitting aging out of my kegger ...  every so often i just give the head space of the keg a burst of CO2 ... and can check the pressure as well  ...  also can help keep the kegs sterile while waiting to be filled ... I did not realise how handy it would be until i started using it ... 

[Otto Von Blotto]

So doing more temperature testing today, at its current setting it is cycling between about 4C and -5/6C so it should keep the kegs pretty cold. The water is still sitting around 4.7 even though it feels freezing to the touch, but I suppose it changes temp slower than air. I tried a glass out of the pale ale keg earlier into a frozen glass second pour and it measured just under 3 degrees. Font fan appears to work well. 

[MitchellScott]

2 hours ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

So doing more temperature testing today, at its current setting it is cycling between about 4C and -5/6C so it should keep the kegs pretty cold. The water is still sitting around 4.7 even though it feels freezing to the touch, but I suppose it changes temp slower than air. I tried a glass out of the pale ale keg earlier into a frozen glass second pour and it measured just under 3 degrees. Font fan appears to work well. 

Sounds like some nice improvements on the new Kegerator... I like the idea of the font fan :).

I noticed in my lines today some of the gas has come out of suspension causing a few bubbles in the liquid line. The only thing I can think of that may be causing that is that when dad is getting beer and opening the door the ambient air temp increases, which increases the temp of the liquid in the lines and therefore some C02 comes out of suspension. Does this sound plausible?

Can see any leaks anywhere and it seems to be functioning OK although with my Coopers XPA I seem to be getting a lot of head on pours even with 4.5m of beer line @ 12 PSI (5mm ID flexmaster line). It is possible the beer is a little overcarbed however it doesn't taste it.

Mitch.

[Otto Von Blotto]

I suppose it's possible but it seems unlikely that opening the fridge would affect it that much. 

[Otto Von Blotto]

Something occurred to me last night, I decided to place the inkbird probe in different areas inside the kegerator to test. Inside, the kegs are in the same configuration as the old one, one at the back and two at the front. I dangled the probe behind both kegs and got similar results to what I mentioned above. Then I put it between the two front ones and it was staying around 4C, not really moving much. At this point, the keg of water had barely dropped as well, stuck at 4.3 degrees. 

The idea came from observing a stream of cold air getting blown out from somewhere in the back when I moved a keg to place the probe. I thought, I'll just move these two front kegs forward slightly, creating a gap between them and the rear one for that air to circulate around the kegs better. It worked great, so far since last night the keg has dropped down to 2.0 degrees. 

On the inkbird note, I have noticed it's begun recording the temperature trends 24 hours a day, the only thing is you can't see the trend from midnight to 10am until it's actually 10am

[MitchellScott]

7 hours ago, Otto Von Blotto said:

Something occurred to me last night, I decided to place the inkbird probe in different areas inside the kegerator to test. Inside, the kegs are in the same configuration as the old one, one at the back and two at the front. I dangled the probe behind both kegs and got similar results to what I mentioned above. Then I put it between the two front ones and it was staying around 4C, not really moving much. At this point, the keg of water had barely dropped as well, stuck at 4.3 degrees. 

The idea came from observing a stream of cold air getting blown out from somewhere in the back when I moved a keg to place the probe. I thought, I'll just move these two front kegs forward slightly, creating a gap between them and the rear one for that air to circulate around the kegs better. It worked great, so far since last night the keg has dropped down to 2.0 degrees. 

On the inkbird note, I have noticed it's begun recording the temperature trends 24 hours a day, the only thing is you can't see the trend from midnight to 10am until it's actually 10am

It's Inkbirds way of saying go to bed and stop checking on your beer! 

[Otto Von Blotto]

2 hours ago, MitchellScott said:

It's Inkbirds way of saying go to bed and stop checking on your beer! 

I dunno what it's sitting at but it's probably the same as the water, which is now at 0.9 degrees. I'll leave it in there and see where it finally stabilises and that will be what I run with on the current fridge setting. 

[drewbert]

First keg in. Burped off the oxygen. In the keezer. Feeling like a boss! 

Even though it's a simple kit and kilo I be prouds

[Otto Von Blotto]

So the keg of water stabilised about -1, I took the probe out and have it dangling in there behind the keg just out of curiosity to see what the range is in that spot, and it's cycling between about 1 degree and -10 at the moment in 30-45 minute cycles. This current cycle it stayed off for almost an hour and has just kicked in and begun dropping the temperature again. 

The fridge's probe isn't going anywhere near as wide as that despite being in a similar spot, but I suppose it's the liquid temperature that matters. Of course, the inkbird probe could just be in a spot where it's copping the full blast of the cold air being blown out from the back and not really indicative of the fridge temp as a whole. It's just dropped 7 degrees in 5 or 6 minutes. 

I'll put the probe back in the keg later and raise the fridge one degree and see what happens, but I'm still very pleased that it's working well. I'll save a bit of CO2 as well by being able to use a lower pressure to carbonate the beer and water. 

Edited September 17, 2019 by Otto Von Blotto

[Pezzza]

On ‎9‎/‎16‎/‎2019 at 6:31 AM, Otto Von Blotto said:

Something occurred to me last night, I decided to place the inkbird probe in different areas inside the kegerator to test. Inside, the kegs are in the same configuration as the old one, one at the back and two at the front. I dangled the probe behind both kegs and got similar results to what I mentioned above. Then I put it between the two front ones and it was staying around 4C, not really moving much. At this point, the keg of water had barely dropped as well, stuck at 4.3 degrees. 

The idea came from observing a stream of cold air getting blown out from somewhere in the back when I moved a keg to place the probe. I thought, I'll just move these two front kegs forward slightly, creating a gap between them and the rear one for that air to circulate around the kegs better. It worked great, so far since last night the keg has dropped down to 2.0 degrees. 

On the inkbird note, I have noticed it's begun recording the temperature trends 24 hours a day, the only thing is you can't see the trend from midnight to 10am until it's actually 10am

How much effect of opening and closing fridge door? Whether some locations in the fridge are more affected by operator opening and closing doors?

Edited September 18, 2019 by Bearded Burbler

[Otto Von Blotto]

58 minutes ago, Bearded Burbler said:

How much effect of opening and closing fridge door? Whether some locations in the fridge are more affected by operator opening and closing doors?

It does affect it a bit but not enough to make a keg from stall 3-4 degrees above where it should be. Anyway, the water keg was a slushy this morning so moving it clearly worked . I've raised the temp on the fridge to get the ice melted again. I think the soda water blocked up a bit with ice too, as it slowed to a trickle when I was pouring a glass for cordial earlier, but it poured fine about a half hour later after I'd warmed up the fridge. I'll give the keg another day then see if it's turned back into full liquid, then put the probe in it again and try to get it stabilised at about 0. May have to use the Fahrenheit function on the kegerator for more precision

[Otto Von Blotto]

Tried a couple of glasses of the pale ale last night, already pretty much carbonated after the 5 days it's been in there, so that will definitely be ready for tomorrow night and the weekend. 

I also took the test water keg out overnight to let it thaw out a bit, put it back in this morning when it was sitting at 9.5, down to 7 so far. Fridge is set warmer this time and I've adjusted the temp calibration, so hopefully it doesn't turn into a slushy again. I'll wait until it stabilises and go from there.

[The Captain!!]

So one out of my three taps pours quite foamy beer. Like it fills the glass with foam with only a inch of beer. While the other two pour perfectly. If I’m quick enough the second pour is better but still quite foamy. 

Im thinking that there might be a Venturi somewhere in the tap? Maybe?

Anyone else had an issue like this?

[MitchellScott]

13 minutes ago, The Captain!! said:

So one out of my three taps pours quite foamy beer. Like it fills the glass with foam with only a inch of beer. While the other two pour perfectly. If I’m quick enough the second pour is better but still quite foamy. 

Im thinking that there might be a Venturi somewhere in the tap? Maybe?

Anyone else had an issue like this?

Definitely sounds like it if they are all pouring from the same gas source and lines are same length etc.

Most likely areas for a Venturi would probably be either the pickup in the keg/o-ring for out post, disconnect could also be the cause.

Do you have a spare disconnect you could throw on and test out? After you pour a beer do you have any foam/bubbles in the line?

Mitch.