Too full...what now?

Kegging
1

Hi there,

first time using a keg and I found out last night that I filled too high. Brew is primed and conditioning in the keg.

I wanted to check to see if it was holding pressure since I dont have co2 yet so its naturally producing off the priming sugar.

Anyway, I pushed the poppet on the gas side (pin locks) and it squirted liquid. I noticed when I filled the keg the level was pretty high but I didnt even think about what was too high.

Is this going to cause me any problems when I do put it on gas and start drinking? My guess it in a couple weeks, I should have at least some pressure in the keg to at least pour some off to get the level below the gas dip tube. Do I need to worry about this at all?

2

It would be a good idea to lower the level of beer in there to avoid it backing up into your gas line when you do hook it up. In the future, try to fill the keg up so the gas tube is not in the beer. You don’t want dirty gas lines, trust me. It ruins beer.

3

thanks for the reply. Is my assumption that I may naturally have enough pressure to pour some off in a few weeks before hooking up gas?

I proabably should have done a test run filling w/5 gals water so I had a visual ref. This batch I thought was under 5 gals slightly.

4

Yes, you should have enough pressure after a few weeks…Pop a picnic tap on to the beer out side, and sample away! :cheers:

5

Yeah, that’s probably true. Give that a try. If it doesn’t work, then you can just siphon some out probably.

6

I have a dedicated turkey baster that I use for such things as removing excess beer from kegs before force carbonating. It also comes in handy for drawing up a bit of beer from a fermenter bucket to put into a hydrometer flask to check the specific gravity. You have to get used to using it in a manner that will not create a lot of dripping outside of where you want the beer to go, but they’re quite handy.

And the squeezable rubber bulb comes off of and reattaches to the tube easily for cleaning and sanitizing.

I prefer a plastic one to a stainless steel one, since you can see how much liquid is in the tube on a plastic one.