Keg won't flow

[San_Diego_Matt]

ao I've had a keg lagering for about 6 weeks now. I wanted to carb it to 2.8 volumes so I hooked it up to 19psi for about 10 days and tonight decided to give it a try.

I turnes the gas down to 10psi, hooked up my picnic tap, pushed the lever and....nothing.

I checked the tank....it has gas. I checked the bottle knob....it's turned on. I checked the on/off lever on the regulator.....it's on. I double checked everything I could and can only get it to trickle out beer after I disconnect the gas disconnect and reattach it.

The beer is a hoppy lager.....an IPL if you will. It has a lot of hops in it so I thought maybe the bottom of the dip tube was clogged so I shot some gas down the beverage out line, reconnected the gas and beverage out connects and....just another trickle.

The fridge it was lagered in was at about 38 degrees. It's been my beer fridge for about 6 years now. It's never frozen a bottle so I seriously doubt the keg is frozen.

Also, there's no pressure relief ring to pull on the top of the keg lid so I can't yank on that so see if the keg even has pressure.

I was also just serving on this picnic tap last week and all I did to if before I hooked it up to this keg was take it apart and wash it. All the parts that came out of it went back in to it so I'm fairly certain the picnic tap isnt the problem.

Anyone have any ideas? I was hoping to crack this stuff out on Sunday.

TIA

Matt

[BDawg]

Take a (sanitized) screwdriver and push down the center of the gas in post on top. You should have gas stream out. If you are getting a massive flow of beer, then you may have the dip tubes reversed, ie, the long tube is connected to the gas in, and the short one is on the beer out post. If beer shoots out the gas post, this is probably the problem. If only gas shoots out, then try the same procedure on the beer out. If nothing shoots out, then you have something clogging the beer out post, and you can depressurize the keg by pushing on the gas in post and letting it all drain. (An easy way to do that also is to simply connect a gray gas connector with no hose or anything on it.)

2) You may have a stuck poppet valve and it's blocking flow. That could be due to hops or due to the poppet valve itself.

3) you may have junk clogging up the connector on your picnic tap.

Either of these, you need to take that piece apart and clean it thoroughly.

HTH-

[San_Diego_Matt]

I vented the gas side (no beer came out) and then removed the beer side post and pulled the dip tube out. It was clear, but upon checking the underside of the post, the popped was COMPLETELY clogged with hops.

This is the same keg from this thread viewtopic.php?f=5&t=20153 so I now know what was causing my transferring problems.

so I've got everything back together and I just pulled my first dirty pint. What do I do now? Turn the PSI back up or just leave it at serving pressure and start the celebratory drinking?

Thanks

Matt

[BDawg]

If it's carbonated to proper levels, drink away!
If not, pull a "sample" pint, then repressure it and let it carbonate fully.
You have to do quality control, right?

Glad it worked out for ya!

[EagleDude]

Start DRINKING! .... I had a similar problem when I took a keg of homebrewed Pliny on a camping trip. Arrived and couldn't pour a beer. I was able to fix the problem by turning up the gas and repeatedly pushing in the beer out poppet until I had cleared the hop chunks.

Sounds like you fixed it, so enjoy.

[San_Diego_Matt]

I'd drinking it now...I don't think it needs any more carbonation, but will keep an eye on it over the...4 day weekend...and if need be, push some higher pressure in there.

Thanks again for the help!

[bcmaui]

I had the same problem when I've dry hopped - hops caught in the dip tube. It's happened when they were thrown in loose with whole hops, or sometimes even when using a hop sack it gets clogged down there as well on the pickup. I have started dry hopping in the conical/carboy and will hang the weighted hopsack with some dental floss from the lid when dryhopping in the keg. Or dry hop in the keg with pellets and filter the debris out as it is moved to another keg.

What worked for me was clearing it out as you did and moving the beer over with a very slow (3-5 psi) transfer to another keg leaving the hops behind. Or keep it as is knowing you will have to clear the dip tube of hop debris every now and then.

[San_Diego_Matt]

I think the hops are only there because of the attempted transfer. I tried to transfer through the beer out post and it clogged and they've been there ever since. I've had 2 pints so far and #2 was a shit ton more clear than #1. The unfortunate part is this IPL is 8.2% so I need to be careful