Beer Goes in and Beer Comes Out

My question is: what caused the beer to sit there for 3-4 seconds? Why didn't it come out immediately?

Oh that one's easy..........Beer Is Good!

"...in a cold fresh stream of beer."

That may be the most beautiful arrangement of those 7 words I've ever seen.

But my best guess is that it takes a few seconds for the CO2 to form tiny bubbles in the beer and for those bubbles to join together to make bigger bubbles and for those bigger bubbles to join together in a sticky framework that pushes up and out of the keg.

Why am I suddenly so thirsty?

Try this experiment:

Tap the top of your friend's beer bottle with the bottom of yours when his is more than half-full. I think you will see about the same thing happen (on a smaller scale of course.)

Still , I can't explain why this happens, I am usually not in a analytical mindset when I try this.

(you may need to buy him another and clean up the mess but, that is a small price to pay in the name of science!!!)

Wonderful theory! Have a GA for what may or may not be pure BS, but -("I really don't know") - at least you were honest!

Mechanical energy from the process of getting the beer in the keg absorbed by the C02 saturated beer. As soon as the the fluid comes to a complete rest its released. May take a second or too to do so. But then what do I know the only thing I know about a keg of beer is how to empty them. Got any to test we can work on it and get back to you?

Hey Hendrick

Could you please explain this concept in a little more of layman's terms. I have wanted to know more about this process for a long time.

I got trained filling kegs by a guy who was in a big hurry. He showed me how to do it and left. He didn't tell me that the beer could come out faster than it went in. So the first time I fumbled the bung and dropped it, I just stood there staring at the beer, until it shot out hit me in the face and jaw and soaked my clothes under the rain gear I was wearing. Because it was 36 degress in the keg room, we wore rain gear and insulated gloves. You were expected to spill a several kegs per shift.

"You were expected to spill a several kegs per shift."

OHH NOO!

There must be a better way, i can't stomach the thought of that many casualties!

Since you were expected to spill a couple per shift.

If you managed NOT to spill any on your shift did that mean you could take one or 2 home?

We need to implement a post rating system. I give this a big GP for making my brain rejoice once again in the delightful physics of beer!

I'm going to guess that this effect is a result of temperature and pressure changes in conjunction with the lag in formation of bubbles which should be relatively slow in the smooth confines of a keg... As to the specifics of how it works, if you send me a full keg I'll perform some 'testing' on it to determine the cause... though I can't promise my report will be legible or the keg full at the end of testing...

There IS a post rating system..
This one has been given 4 stars.
Look at the top of your screen somewhere, or maybe it's fallen on the floor....

Trust me I'm a Cat

"Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Ben Franklin

I haven't got a clue about thermodynamics, but this seemed relevant.

The CO2 purges all the oxygen from the keg. Cold beer enters, and condenses/absorbs/whatever the CO2. The cold beer (and gas) is now in contact with the warmer surface of the keg. Wherever the gas went as the beer entered, it will now get warmer with the warming beer, and wants to expand back into it's former state.

The time for the beer to gain temperature in the tank is a bit like holding a coffee mug. When you fill a mug with boiling water, there's a time delay until your hand feels the heat. It's the same, except without beer, mug, and hot coffee. It's also with opposite temperature change. Apart from that it's the same.. If the keg was the same temperature as the beer, it wouldn't happen (you'd have to imagine the keg + gas sitting for a while, to be at the same temperature as the entering beer). A few seconds before you drop the hot mug, a few seconds before the gas dissolves out and forces a beer shower. It's a bit the same. Maybe.

That's probably the same as Hendrik said, but more mangulated. I know what I mean, even if no other person on the planet does !

< Trivial diversion : When I was younger, I had a p/t job in a pub. Part of the job was swapping over kegs and cleaning the lines from cellar to bar. There were little cylindrical sponges to force through the beer lines for stuff like Guinness (makes the lines muckier). It was necessary to draw through a pint or two, in order to make sure that the beer was running good (no water/cleaning residue in the line). Anything more than a pint seemed like a waste to me. This diversion has probably explained more than enough !>

Nothing wrong with that. Those first couple of pints were to clean out the lines anyway. Recycling.