Keg disasters and the humble poppet valve

After eight days in primary, I racked my Colonial Honey Porter over to the serving keg (skipping the secondary fermentation phase). I cranked up the pressure to 12 PSI and set my temperature controller down to 38 degrees, then went to bed.

Mistake.

When I woke up the next morning, the smell of flat beer wafted up from the kitchen as I descended the stairs. Much to my horror, there was beer all over the floor, and the source was my kegerator -- just under a gallon of my precious Colonial Honey Porter had leaked from my keg overnight. The old saying urges us not to cry over spilt milk, but spilt home brew? That's an entirely different story.

The interesting thing is that the regulator on the CO2 tank showed that the keg was still pressurized -- whatever leak I had was slow and steady, but just enough to dispense almost a gallon in small drips as I slept. I guessed that there was a leak in the OUT valve on my corny keg. I turned the pressure off, cleaned up the spilled beer, and dissambled the valve. The poppet valve wasn't set quite right, so I reseated it and put everything back together. No more leaks after that, thank goodness.

Morals of the story:

• If you can help it, don't keg your beer and go straight to bed. Anything can happen.
• Make sure that your valves are assembled properly with no leaks.

Posted by Chad Dickerson at August 12, 2004 07:08 AM