Out of CO2

OAE Iceman

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Went out to my shop tonight to pour myself a beer out of one of my 3 kegs and aaaah! my co2 tank is empty and nothing coming out of any of the kegs. To late in the evening to get a refill. When I hook up another co2 tank tomorrow will my beer be ok, or is it all shot. Rats!

Brian
 
The beer should be fine. Its cold, and some of the CO2 has come out of solution, but a day or two on gas and your back in bidness. Watch the gauge closer next time. Remember, As the gas pressure gets lower, CO2 will come out of the beer and the last few pours will be pushed out by the head pressure in the keg. The more kegs connected to the system, the more drawn out the last few pours will be. If you think the gas bottle is going, and you cant get to the store for a day or two, you can shutoff or unhook all but the keg you are drinking on.

and if you got one of these:

http://tomsbrewshop.com/product/co2-keg-charger/

you can supplement your pressure until the cylinder is filled. Kind of like having a spare tank, and it travels well. It doesn't have a regulator, so you just shoot gas in in spurts to pressure up the head space. Handy thing to have.
 
One more thing. If you had pressure, and then the next day had nothing, you got a leak. Fix that first.
 
I hate it when that happens, on the safe side make sure you don't open any kegs, then bleed them all before adding the new tank, you don't want back pressure to fool your gages
 
Thanks for the input! I got co2 this morning and just tried a pint and its great! Found the leak also! I wonder if there is some kind of check valves I can put in my co2 lines that go to the kegs so that if there is a leak, not all 3 kegs loose pressure.

Brian
 
Smugly, he points out the advantages of bottle conditioning.... ;-)

Glad everything worked out and a question from a non-kegger: Don't these systems come with pressure gauges?
 
unfortunately the level of co2 cannot reliably be displayed, the gage either reads full or not so in my opinion its worthless, took mine off

one more thing is that temperature differences like in a keezer at 40ish make that gage read wrong
 
Nosybear said:
Don't these systems come with pressure gauges?

You got two gauges:

1) Bottle Pressure. Gives a high pressure reading of the bottle. It cant tell you when the bottle is empty, only that the pressure is no longer "high". Sort of like using an odometer to measure your Johnson.

2) Keg Pressure. This gives a reading of the line pressure. This can be deceiving, especially with large systems, as it will read the proper pressure, up to and until, the bottle pressure is the same as the line pressure, and then you will start to notice the drop. If you notice the drop. More likely, you will notice the beer flowing slowly, and by then its already dropped to the point that the pressure is actually gas coming out of solution system wide. The more kegs, the larger the total volume, the more slowly this pressure drop manifests itself. Furthermore, this effects the entire system. All beers that are connected will loose CO2 equally. And this ALWAYS seems to happen at night, on weekends, and after you been drinking. Murphy's Law.

What you can do, besides have a backup CO2 source, is pay attention to the high pressure gauge, and as it gets close to empty, shutoff the gas to all but the keg you are drinking on. This isolates the system to just one keg, simplifying the pressure drop identification procedure, and preserving the CO2 levels in the kegs not connected.
 
And this ALWAYS seems to happen at night, on weekends, and after you been drinking. Murphy's Law.

you got that right an for me mostly on Saturday night or Sunday when the store is closed
 
Luckily I know a liquor store/brew shop that has CO2 exchange and they're open until at least midnight. They're there for emergencies. :)
 
Thanks for the feedback. Cearum, thanks for the check valve link. I have 3 kegs in my keezer and they all run off one gauge thats on my CO2 tank. My three different beers would like there own gauges. I would like to have three separate gauges, but I just haven't gotten around to doing it. The leak I found in my system was on the CO2 post on a new keg that I just bought. Put a wrench to it and its good. When the keg goes dry I will do a better fix.

Brian
 

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