What Does a Flow Control Faucet Do?
In order to properly serve a pint of beer from your kegerator you need to have a balanced system. You decide what carbonation level you’d like to serve and what temperature you want your beer to be and set a CO2 pressure based on those two factors. To pour a proper pint, well carbonated without excessive foam, you need to balance your system. Balancing offsets your set CO2 pressure with the proper amount of resistance. Not enough resistance = fast pouring and excessively foamy beers. Too much resistance = beer pours too slowly or not at all. Each component along the way provides some resistance. Typically most of the resistance comes in the form of adding more beer line. More line = more resistance. For a full rundown of this see: Step by Step Balancing Your Kegerator Draft System
What do flow control faucets do?
Flow control faucets feature a built in flow compensator that allows you to adjust the resistance your faucet is exerting. That means less tubing and potentially less foaming and wasted beer. The compensation feature also makes it easier to serve higher carbonation beers as you can set the faucet to provide resistance to offset the increased pressure needed to store and serve these beers at higher pressures. Instead of replacing your beer line with ever increasing lengths of tubing, you simply turn a knob to increase resistance.
In my opinion Intertap and Perlick are top faucet manufacturers and both have a flow control model.
Intertap Stainless Steel Forward Sealing with Flow Control
Intertap forward sealing faucets have a unique modular, threaded spout design which can fit a variety of different attachments including a growler filler, stout spout and ball lock post. Check out my Hands on Review of these great faucets.
- via CRAFT’R
- via MoreBeer
- via Adventures in Homebrewing
- via William’s Brewing
- via Amazon – multiple models are available on this product page, make sure the flow control version is available
Perlick 650SS
If you’re looking to add flow control to existing faucets a couple of solutions are available. William’s Brewing offers this flow control shank adapter. CMBecker via Keg Connection offers this inline flow control valve.
Related:
- Kegerator Foam Problems? – Fight the First Foamy Pint!
- Step by Step Balancing Your Kegerator Draft System
Also: Kegerator Tips & Gear | Keg Repair Part #s | Recent Keg Finds
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