carbonation consternation

[BitterBrewer]

DISCLAIMER: I admit, there must be posts out there on this subject already,but damned if I can find them.

I racked 3.5 gallons of original bitter to my corny keg 4 days ago for my first kegged homebrew. I set the regulator to 15 psi and did the whole shake, cool, shake some more thing the day I kegged. I left the whole rig (CO2 tank and all) set up in the fridge at 12 psi.

Once a day, I would bleed off the pressure down to about 5 psi to draw a pint. After 3 days, I still had very little dissolved carbonation. I got ticked and cranked the regulator up to 18 psi. The next day my carbonation was a little better, but still not wonderful. That was last night, so I'm writing to ask for suggestions. What should I do and what did I do wrong?

One more question: What pressure should I use to serve? I have a regular old picnic tap, 3/16 inch tubing that's about 5' long. Should I leave the CO2 on, or turn it off when serving?

[HarkJohnny]

After the first time or two of shaking my kegs I decided it wasn't worth it and went with a simpler process:

after I keg a new brew I set the dial to 20psi and leave it alone for about 3 days. After that I bleed off most all of the pressure and set the dial to about 8-10psi to serve and leave it that way. The standard is usually 2psi per foot of serving hose.

you can do 30psi for a day or two if you need to get it done quickly.

p.s. welcome to the boards!

[BitterBrewer]

Do you worry at all about overcarbonating when you're using a pressure that high? I mean, for an Original Bitter, I didn't want to wind up with too much carbonation, so I tried to carb at 12 psi . . . maybe I should've cranked it up for a few days though like you said.

Any advice on what to do now, given that I already have dissolved some carbonation into the beer? I guess the real answer might be "crank it up, but make sure you don't overcarb by sampling often", which I think I could live with : )

Thanks for the reply. These boards rock, they're a great way to get my homebrewing fix even at work

[haaseg]

Well, one thing to remember is that left un-pressurized, beer has a tendency to go flat. If you overcarb, this works in your favor.

If you overcarb it, I wouldn't worry too much. Get it fully carbonated, then roll back the PSI to your desired pressure. This chart (http://www.liquidbread.com/chart.html) has been posted many many times and may help.

What will happen is... when you roll back the pressure, there will actually be higher PSI in the beer than in the headspace of your keg. Over time, the carbonation will fall out of the beer and the PSI in the headspace will increase. Each time you draw off a pint, the PSI in the headspace lowers again. This cycle will continue until the PSI in the beer is about the same as on your pressure guage.

So ultimately, my advice is... if you overcarb the beer, relax, have a homebrew, and it will fix itself. :D