Unfiltered beer kegging

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.

So do you rack with a siphon, or just dump it? Seems that you are getting too many, and too big of chunks… Even if racking, you follow the beer down til you get close to the bottom? Sneezles61

This is the first time my brother, who just got into the hobby at Christmas, was helping me rack into the keg and he got a little low in the primary and I saw some chunks fly down the tube. I’m assuming the biggest chunks have already been pulled through now that I’ve had 4-5 beers, but I’m just going to go with this setup for the remainder of the keg to see if I notice any other issues. Seems to be okay so far. Just putting my experience out there in case anyone else ever has this issue.

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Interesting about the issue with not having too foamy a first pour… having pulled the poppet… It may be a try with my extremely high carbed belgiums… Sneezles61

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Belgians you boob :grinning:

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Nooo, was thinnin’ belgiums… :confused: Sneezles61

Didn’t know there was more than one. A north and a south perhaps like the Americas ?

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I would think they would be east and west.

Up or down? In or out? :joy: Sneezles61