Homebrewing Blog and Resource

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Balancing Your Keg System

In this latest video of our kegging series we address how to balance your keg and CO2 setup to get a great pour with minimal foaming.

A balanced system is critical to keep your beer carbonated at the levels you want, but also allows the beer to be pushed out of the keg with enough force to fill your glass, but minimizing foam. Too much foam and you end up wasting beer because you inevitably pour off the foam to try and fill it with more beer. Professional set ups view this aspect of draft beer maintenance as critical to achieving maximal return on each keg of beer ($/pourable beers).

Luckily, it’s not really that hard to do. In this video, I discuss the concept of restriction and how providing the right back pressure via the exit tubing keeps all the pressures in balance. Allowing a great pour and keeping your beer carbed and ready for that next pour. Do not underestimate the value of 3/16th inch tubing when setting up your beer lines!

Here is a link to a carbonation chart I mentioned as well:
Carbonation Chart

Enjoy the video.
BREW ON!

More Kegging Homebrew Videos:

Video 1 – Introduction To Kegging Homebrew

Video 2 – Everything You Wanted To Know About Corny Kegs

Video 3 – Learn Something About CO2 Tanks and Regulators

Video 4 – Guide to Keg Faucets and Towers

Video 6 – Hombrew Kegging Tips

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5 Comments

  1. Tero

    Hello! First of all, thank you for a great and informative series, I found it really usefull when thinking about building my own system! A question I’d like to ask is about compensator faucets : do you have any experience with those and if so, do you feel that the pros outweight the somewhat higher price? Again, thank you and as you say, brew on 🙂

  2. I have never used these. To be honest I forgot they existed. All the reviews I found on line (some as recent as 2013) seem to be positive. I think these are also being used with some of those traveling keg setups where the faucet is mounted directly to the “beverage out” ball lock connector. Effectively giving you zero beer line to provide back pressure, i.e. restriction.

    I have a four tap kegorator set up now. Two of the faucets are mounted on my rolling trash can kegorator that I use for cook outs in the yard. So my main kegorator is devoid of two faucets. I may try and buy a couple of these as replacements and see how they work.

    I don’t know exactly how they work, but it seems to me that its a clever way to provide restriction without using excessive amounts of beer line. The real intent of these faucets are in professional setups where the pressures to dispense need to be high due to really long beer runs (like from a basement or room away from the bar).

    I’d say give them a shot. Worst case is you are out another $20 ish buck over traditional faucets and they still work as regular faucets. Best case, you have ultimate flow control for all your beer.

    If you try them comment back here and let us know. I am truly curious too now.
    BREW ON

  3. Tero

    Hey all, Just to give you an update – I installed the faucets with flow control (called compensators here in Europe) last week along with the rest of the kegerator and tried it yesterday. The flow was foamy to start with but with a little tuning of the flow control the pour was perfect. Seemed well worth the extra price and also I’d imagine it makes using different carbonation levels much easier 🙂

  4. Great news, Tero. It’s all about the tuning.

  5. Joel

    Hello,
    I just watched your video on balancing your system. I just finished my keezer and while building all my info that I read was telling me to use 5ft of beer line so that’s what I got. My first keg was an honey wheat ale that I carbonated to 14psi for a 2.7 rating. Now should I set my regulator to 14psi to dispense since I don’t have a longer line and higher carboinated beer. When I poor it is all foam (currently set to 12psi on the reg)

    Please help thank you
    Joel

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