First keg tapping

[Cody]

I tapped my first keg last night. I have been using it to age my Berliner Weisse for the past 6 months. What a glorious experience!! Luckily, everything was nicely pressure-tight and I had no leaks. I think I drank four pints of my BW, not because it was particularly awesome, but because having it on draft was so amazing. My wife isn't going to like this, but I think I need to get a kegerator now.

Unfortunately, it was an all-extract BW, so the flavors aren't particularly clean and fresh, but it is really starting to come into its own with a nice, light tartness. I didn't mess with balancing my system, since I was just interested in drinking it. One question for y'all, though: will having too much liquid line strip carbonation from the beer, or will it just reduce flow-rate? Because I bulk primed, and I don't know if the low carbonation level was just due to the ~50°F temperature of the beer, or if the line may have had something to do with that. I will say that there was plenty of nice, creamy head when I poured it rough, it just didn't stay in solution.

[animaldoc]

Having a long line by itself won't strip the carbonation from the beer as the pressure is (for our purposes) constant from the keg to the tap. What will strip some of the CO2 out is temperature ..... if the beer in the line is warmer than the beer in the keg, the carbonation of the beer in the line will decrease relative to the colder beer in the keg. I have this issue with my chest freezer/colar kegerator, the lines to the tap are in the upper part of the collar and the temperature is definitely higher than at the bottom. ( At some point plan to install a small computer fan in there to move air around). So if you have long lines and are pouring intermittently it may be a minor issue.

I think a more significant issue is the bulk priming of the keg and your dispensing ... you don't state if you are pushing with CO2 or are just using the pressure in the keg from your priming -- if the latter, the pressure is dropping with each pint you pour and there is more drive for the CO2 to leave the beer.

If you have CO2, you can correct the carbonation by turning the regulator up to the proper pressure for the volumes of CO2 you want in the beer. If you are storing at 50F you'll probably need higher storing pressure than dispensing pressure, necessitating adjusting the regulator at the beginning of each drinking session and venting the pressure to allow better serving.