When all you want to do is sit down and enjoy your favorite beer on tap in the comfort of your own home at the end of a long day, but to your great dismay it comes out flat, cloudy, off-taste, or the worst, super foamy, what do you do? Well, you have to fix it pronto! Beer is no good to you when it is not entering your glass properly. Here’s a few troubleshooting tips to help you through your beer dispensing debacle.

What if your beer is coming out flat or the foam is settling too quickly? The problem could be one of three things: your glass is greasy, you didn’t pour it right, or perhaps you are low on CO2 pressure in your machine. First, make sure you are not using a greasy or dirty glass. Make sure to always wash your beer glasses separately, especially not with anything that has previously contained milk or anything else fatty (that includes thorough removal of lipstick residue). Beer glass cleaning 101: use hot water, let it air dry, use detergent not soap (nothing fat- or oil-based), always rinse in fresh cold water just before serving, and most importantly, beer glasses are only for BEER. The next possible issue to address is: are you pouring like a pro or an amateur? Key points to remember when dispensing your draft are to initially open the faucet all the way as fast as possible and the foam head should be ½” to 1” high. Lastly, be sure the tank is turned ON, and if the tank is low, fill it. Other reasons why the tank is malfunctioning could be that there is an obstruction, so obviously you need to take care of that, or maybe you need to increase the pressure if it’s not coming out fast enough. Also, do not run your beer system on keg pressure alone and check that the refrigerator temperature does not exceed 40° F.

Maybe your beer is not coming out flat, but it’s cloudy, weird-tasting, or is all foam and no beer. For cloudy beer the fix is pretty basic: that means it is either over-chilled, under-chilled, or again, you are not opening the faucet all the way or fast enough. If your beer has a strange taste, or no taste, then the system is either dirty, contaminated, or you simply need to buy a new keg because the beer is old. When it comes to having an overload of foam there are several different things that could be going on. The beer might be too warm (keep the temp under 40°F), there is too much CO2 (usually 10-12 PSI is a proper amount), the beer lines are old or have warm spots (be sure to keep all the tubing inside the fridge), there is an obstruction in the faucet or it has worn parts, and if you are not pouring it right you could also get too much foam.

As you can see, the most important thing to master for the utmost enjoyment of your at-home beer tap is pouring technique. If you can pour like a champ most of your beer issues should dissolve, aside from technical dilemmas. So go have a beer already!