Beer Forum

Kegged my homebrew for 1st time and took a couple weeks to become "carbonated" Not sure what's up but had to crank the pressure up a bit to carbonate a Stout. Has a nice head when poured but immediately dissolves and beer seems "fizzy" like coke. Is this normal for kegging? Just doesn't seem quite right to me.

What's the psi and temp you have your beer at? I find that it's pretty easy to over carb your beer when kegging but it's an easy fix... I vent the gas out of the keg an drop the psi a couple points, my ales sit around 9 psi @ 37F... Not sure if that's right but I like it... And as for the head disappearing quick, odds are you just have head retention problems... More flaked oats? Carafoam? No big deal of the heads not there it'll just lack in the presentation area a bit!


Josh

Here is the table that I use to determine what PSI to use depending on the temp and beer style.

http://www.kegerators.com/carbonation-table.php

After I had the same problem once I found this chart, and never had an issue again.

Carbonation level is well approximated by Vols = (P+ 14.695)*(0.01821 + 0.090115*exp(-(T-32)/43.11)) -0.003342 where T is in °F and P is in psig. There is a bit more to it than just volumes however. It is also nevessary that the protein profile be proper for the creation and retention of head. For a stout you cannot get the classsic head without a sparkler plate and a nitrogen/CO2 mix.

Something that I have noticed in the past is the inverse proportionality between the abv and the head retention...but I don't know if that is a real correlation.

What ~abv is the stout?

Are your glasses straight out of the dishwasher with rinse agent? Other than that it is a recipe problem...add a little wheat to get more head retention.

monkeytailbrew wrote:Something that I have noticed in the past is the inverse proportionality between the abv and the head retention...but I don't know if that is a real correlation.

It definitely is real. When we measure bitterness we measure up 10 mL of beer in a pipet. If something weren't done about the foam it would be impossible to attain an accurate volume reading. To solve the problem we dip the tip of the pipet into alcohol (it's not ethyl alcohol but that's not really significant).

Pour yourself a glass of beer which has good head retention then add in a drop or 2 of vodka and see what happens.