Unclogging a corny keg (with carbed beer inside)

[Chemiker]

I had my first clogged keg tonight and thought I'd share my ingenious method for unclogging it. Hopefully this is helpful and not obvious to everyone.

Step 1: remove the post, poppet, and dip tube.





I got about 1" of hop matter out of the dip tube/poppet, and wanted to make sure that it didn't happen again in case there was still more material in the keg.

Step 2: put back the dip tube and post, but without the poppet. I fitted a 5/8" ID tube over the post and into a waste bucket, and gave the keg a shot of CO2 to pump out the liquid/solids out of the bottom. It really worked well! Just be sure to release the gas with the release valve when you see clear beer, or I imagine you could lose a lot of liquid. Also, I didn't click the CO2 valve on all the way. Just a little bit to get some gas into the keg, and then pulled it off right away.

[Mike_n_dax]

Looks Like it worked so it is a good example of what to do. Question tho Why did you have so much hop matreial in the Keg?

[NHBrewer]

I always just put the gas in part of the way onto the liquid out poppet forcing CO2 down the diptube to dislodge the blockage. Then hope it settles as I have had to do this more than once on one stubborn keg. If your solution works its great but blowing gas down the tube causes no extra cleaning or opening of the serving vessel.


NHB

[Cody]

I really like the concept of weighing the keg at full and empty. That hadn't occurred to me before.

[TastyMcD]

I have this situation when I dryhop in the corny keg without a hopsack (which is often). When it's time to transfer (filter actually) to the serving corny, I gently lay the keg on it's side gas-in connector down and push the beer out the gas-in connector by pushing CO2 in the beer-out connector. Works great.
Tasty

[Chemiker]

Overzealous racking from the fermenter is the cause. I don't use secondaries, and I aspirated too much of the trub from the fermenter. No big deal. I tried to blow it out with CO2 into the serving port, but it didn't work for some reason, even up to 20psi. I also figured I would end up with stray hop material haunting the whole keg, so wanted to get rid of it all. This method is super easy and fast. A length of 5/8" tubing and a wrench and 10 minutes later you're done.

Not knowing what was clogging the port, I actually considered doing what Tasty proposed by transferring under pressure from the gas in port into another keg. Thanks Tasty for chiming in, it's nice to know that would work!

As far as weighing the kegs, yeah, I got tired of not knowing how close I was to empty (I don't have a good enough feel to do this by hand), so I weigh them. You really only need the empty weight (which is 9 to 10# for all my kegs), and the density of beer (about 8.3#/gal), and you can guess how much beer you have left. Handy when bottling from a keg

[duckmanco]

Could have used this post a few days ago when my
Pliny clone that I racked a metric f*ck ton of loose dry hop pellets caused the liquid side to plug up so bad that attaching the gas to the liquid side wouldn't force it clear.... Now my question... Due to all of the "on off" force of pulling the gas ball lock off and on the liquid side, it looked like I marred up the plastic ring at the base of the fitting.... I put it back on the gas side after finally clearing the liquid side and it seems to be working normal with no leaks... But in the spirit of worrying about all things homebrew, should I replace the gas ball lock?

[Chemiker]

I'm not an expert, but I think the way it attaches doesn't rely on that plastic ring, so it's probably fine. If it were me, I'd connect it and use soapy water to look for a leak. Nothing like coming out to an empty CO2 tank because of a bad connection! I had this happen recently with one of those ball lock valves they sell for 2 liter bottles. The fit wasn't right and I emptied a CO2 tank in a couple of days.