My first attempt at naturally carbonating my keg went mediocre at best. Not because naturally carbonating the beer resulted in issues, but because my beer wasn’t entirely filtered and didn’t know it. I had attempted to pull a draft and quickly was disappointed seeing no beer coming through the tap line. I did some research and thought I had a clogged dip tube (due to yeast). I put the gas line on the “out” line and blew the clogged line out (back into keg). I thought I fixed the issue and went back to normal setup. Same result. No beer. I then took the dip tube out and while removing the poppet I realized the poppet valve was the thing that was clogged. I removed the debris (from orange peel & lemon peel) and tried pulling a draft again and only got about 1/3rd of the line before it clogged again. I removed the poppet valve and cleaned it several times and got the same results over and over. Finally, I decided to remove the poppet valve and spring, as well as remove the valve spring in the draft line coupler as well. Turned the gas on and no more issues. The beer comes through with no issues, although I get get some orange peel and lemon peel in my draft sometimes.
One note that I’ve noticed is that the beer never foams now. I used to get foam for the first beer I poured as well as an inch or two in the subsequent beers. Now the only time I get foam is if I purposefully pour like a 5 yr old. Has anyone else ever had this experience? I know that I have to shut off the gas completely and relieve the gas pressure before removing the coupler, but I thought it was a better fix than transferring carbonated beer from keg to keg just to re-pressurize the beer since my beer wasn’t filtered sufficiently.