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co2 tank questions
ok, had a strange situation come up and i'm stumped. i had a spare 5 lb co2 tank and a buddy of mine needed one, i took it to my normal place and swapped it out for a full one and gave it to him.
he kegged his first batch last night, and said his beer (normal IPA) tasted great before going into the keg, then he force carbed (set to 30 psi and shook it up). i don't think he purged all of the air out of the keg before shaking it up and he said the beer was probably only about 60 degrees F. he said a couple hours later he tasted it and it tasted awful, full of wet card board, oxidation flavors.
is it possible that they gave me O2 or something that could have caused immediate oxidation? is that even possible? it seems to me it would take a while to oxidize, but maybe not if it's forced into solution? woudl not purging the air out make that big of a difference?
could it be a really bad carbonic acid bite? doesn't sound like what he described though.
can tanks of co2 be contaminated with chemicals causing off flavors?
also, what should a full 5lb co2 tank read on the pressure gauge at room temp? say 70 F. i always get about 800 or so from a full tank, he said this one was only 700, but i also don't know what temp it was.
i really feel bad because it was his first attempt at kegging and i've been telling him how great it is, and i supplied the tank. meeting tonight to get more details and a taste of the beer, but any thoughts, suggestions, comments appreciated!
I would have to say the CO2 is fine, it is probably the beer. Oxidation usually dosnt show up for at least a month in packaged beer, perhaps serious exposure could escalate that.
The other side of the coin could be the beer was oxidized from the get go with his process of fermenting or exposure during transfers, he couldnt detect it in flat beer, but once carbonated, like other elements of beer flavor, it got greatly enhanced and is now noticable.
My bet is though it is just the green beer flavor you get when you first keg a beer. Even though the kegging process is much quicker, patience still needs to be exercised, he should have chilled the beer first, and not carbed at 60 deg, (and of course purged and burped the keg) always next time. I bet in 10-14 days his beer will be much better.
A far as the pressure of 700#s I would assume if his beer was at 60, so is the ambient air, and the tank will probably read about that. The tank pressure means nothing, it is the volume of remaining gas that matters, the regulator releases the controlled pressure to the keg regardless of the tank's internal pressure. If it was say in his garage at 40 degrees, the tank pressure may say 500 and even be in the red, but the regulated output pressure will still be the same. A tank will either have pressure, or have none, that period of time where it is going empty does not last long, it will go from full pressure to zero almost instantly.
Could it be a dirty Keg?
after meeting with him and making him tell me step by step about all of his processes, and tasting the beer, i think it is a combination of things causing the off flavors. which, weren't as bad as he led me to believe. a few of us tasted the beer and i'm sure it will get better with time.
he did celan and sanitize the keg, but probably not as thoroughly as necessary. didn't remove posts and popits, and didn't run cleaner and sanitizer through everything.
this makes me worry about the beer after it's sitting for a couple weeks, but not necessarily right away.
i think it was mostly just off flavors from being a young beer, just put into the keg. it did have a slight oxidation taste, but this probably came from other areas of the process.
the most noticeable off flavor was an acrid/metallic flavor that didn't hit until a good 3-4 seconds after swallowing. i think this may have come from not properly cleaning the dip tube or other areas of the keg.
anyone know of any process related problems that can cause a delayed metallic taste?
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