One Flaw/Risk in this design
I bought several of these quite a while ago - 2-3 years maybe? At first I was very happy with them. I disliked the "tripod" poppets in many of my 7 kegs because they were not easly to fully clean.
Recently I had a dry-hopped IPA that would not flow properly. I fought with everything for hours, trying scrutinizing and swapping every single piece of the system. Beer would only flow for a second or so when first connecting, and oddly, also for a brief spurt while disconnecting. Drove me bananas until I eventually I figured out what was going on.
The keg was one I bought new, but it came with a bad o-ring on the outlet dip tube. I replaced that o-ring at the same time as I replaced the tripod poppets in some of the kegs with these coil-spring poppets. In hindsight, the combination of the new thicker o-ring, the coiled-spring poppet, and likely the particular brand of coupler I was using meant that the spring on this poppet was being compressed greatly, allowing only very tiny gaps between each coil of the spring for the liquid to pass through. This is the downside to this type of poppet - the liquid has to pass from the inside of the spring to the outside past the coils. The fine hop fibres settling at the bottom of my freshly dry hopped IPA were clogging these fine spaces. Swapping in the one old tripod poppet I still had on hand solved the problem immediately, as that design of poppet freer flow of liquid because the liquid flows beside its spring not through it.
After that epiphany, I realized that these poppets were key to a serious problem I had 2-3 years ago. Just after I'd replaced these poppets, I began having extreme in-line foaming with all of my beers. I tried everything to resolve the problem - new lines (thinner, thicker, longer, shorter), all new Nukataps, rebuilding my TapRite regs, new couplers... Never did solve the problem but managed to get it liveable so long as I kept all of my beers at relatively low carb level. I now realize that these poppets were likely the major cause of the problem - because they were allowing very little flow past the spring, there was an immediate drop in pressure as the liquid made its way through the coils, causing the foaming in the line!
So these may or may not work fine for you, depending on exactly what your various measurements and tolerances are within your posts, dip tubes, o-rings and couplers (including the pin length of the coupler and spring strength within the coupler).
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Reviewed by: Richard Kovach
from Calgary on 6/25/2024
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