Beer Forum

my poppet plugged with hop debris. tapped it, put 60 psi at it.. nothing will dislodge the block. since i need to take the post off, i'm thinking of just removing both beer side poppets (picnic tap in my fridge.. but not gas so i can disconnect) and rock it! besides not being able to remove the beer discon without an expensive shower, any other reason i shouldn't do this? i can't think of any.

I only have one poppet on the beer side. What do you mean by both?

You might try hooking the gas up to the beer side and venting the keg a but to see if you can clear the blockage in reverse. If not, I guess taking it apart is your only option...unless you have an extra keg laying around. You may be able to accomplish a closed transfer by hooking gas to the beer side, beer to the gas side and flipping the keg upside down. Never tried it, but it might work. Good luck.

inside the corny disconnect is a poppet as well in order to maintains it's self-sealing feature when removed from the post. i just figure since i need to vent and remove the post then clean and starsan it all, i might as well just ditch the poppet. since it could get clogged again requiring more rounds of cleaning until the pellet debris is out. transferring would also be a PITA only in the sense that i try not to create situations that i can contaminate my beer if i can help it. also if i have this keg of ~13% bw tapped for a few years, i'm causing wear to both springs. probably negligible when compared to 12 psi that it would need to hold back, but what the eff.. i hate wearing things out for not reason. (think burning your clutch disc). both co2 tanks are dead so i can't monkey with it for a few days..

I have had similar problems with both dry hopped IIPA's and with a Janet's brown. Isn't always a problem. but sometimes a real issue ... especially since it happened last time when I took a full keg out camping and had no other beer options.

Solutions everytime (with a variable amount of messing with it) was to take the ball lock off and poke the poppet multiple times and at varying depths until I was able to loosen the "hop block" enough to blow through. You know it is a success when your face is met with a forcefull spray of beer. . Sometimes I have to repeat the process a few times, but it has always eventually been successful.

EagleDude wrote:... poke the poppet multiple times and at varying depths until I was able to loosen the "hop block" enough to blow through. You know it is a success when your face is met with a forcefull spray of beer. ..

i have gotten this beer shower when a poppet failed to close after successful un-docking. in the woods i could see blipping it and spraying a few oz's to clear the blockage else it will be a dry weekend.

keelanfish wrote:You might try hooking the gas up to the beer side and venting the keg a but to see if you can clear the blockage in reverse.

I believe I've heard of this being successful...

Can't you just release all the gas, remove the beer out post, and give the post and poppet a quick rinse?

troybinso wrote:Can't you just release all the gas, remove the beer out post, and give the post and poppet a quick rinse?

You should probably pull the dip tube too and run a dip tube brush through it to clear any blockages. (and of course re-sanitize everything.)

Wayne