Homebrew Beer Blog

A while back I upgraded my chrome taps with nice forward sealing stainless Ventmatics.

These are really cool. They have a great smooth internal design, all stainless, and forward seal. Forward sealing means there isn’t any beer sitting in the faucet exposed to the air. That means no mold or flies. It also means the beer doesn’t dry up and make your faucets stick. I’ve seen guys bust their tap trying to un-stick a faucet.

When I got them, the pour was OK. It was better than my old faucets, but didn’t quite live up to the hype. A year or so went by and I started tinkering off and on with my pour. I recently revisited this and pulled out all my spouts to do some comparisons. The faucet’s spouts are interchangeable and as it turns out, they can significantly change the pour of the beer.

A couple of my Ventmatics came with larger 12.5 mm spouts. I think normally home brewers buy them with 11 mm or 11.75 spouts. The bigger spouts caused my pour to be hollowed, which made for a bunch of foam in the glass. The trick to a nice pour is as little turbulence as possible so not to knock the CO2 out of solution. Initially I thought it was because it was too fast, so I bought longer tubing, which only made the problem worse. Turns out the flow was too slow, so I tried shortening the tubing and that helped, but still no dice since it was flying out of the tap. I tried boosting my serving CO2 and that helped, but then that would make my beer over carbonated. And then I read about different spouts on the Internet.

If I had to guess here the 12.5 mm spouts are better suited for commercial bars where they serve beer with higher carbonation and at higher psi. There’s also these 8 mm spouts available. I picked up an 8mm a while back from the manufacturer and it worked great, and then I kind of forgot about it. Recently I picked up another and after some testing, I think this is my solution. For my setup, it made a huge difference. Nice solid pour and I can control the beer’s head with the glass tilt.

So, I plan to pick up a couple more of the 8 mm for my other two taps. I serve at about 42-degrees and 10-11 psi, and usually use about 5 feet of 3/16 tubing. This setup is giving my perfect pour. Great faucet, the right spout, the right tubing, right temp, and right pressure.

I picked up my spouts at Northern Brewer (#40050) They also sell the 12.5 spouts if you’re interested in checking those out. They may actually work well for a highly carbonated beer. (#40049) A true beer geek should have not only the right glass for the right beer, but also serve it with the right spout.

Here is my assortment of spouts. From left to right, 8mm, 11mm, 11.75mm and 12.5mm.