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Does anyone know where to get one of those plastic spouts to put on your soda spout that seperates the syrup and water so you can check your mix ratio? Pepsi comes once every two years to do some maintenance and they checked it out, was way too much syrup in a couple of them. Of course they won't part with their stuff.

It's called a "brix kit". I got mine from my service guys, and was not charged for them (two in the past 20 years). Make sure you get a nozzle adapter that matches what you have at your theatre.

If your company owns the equipment, and service calls are included, it costs THEM to come out and brix your heads. It's a reasonable angle for them to consider that you can keep an eye on it yourself if they leave a kit for you.

On the other hand, if you automatically have your company come out once (or twice) a year, make sure they check the brix on each call. A decent fountain system should go at least that long without any drift, barring actual problems with a valve.

Remember that with some valves, temperature can have an effect on the amount of syrup that flows at the nozzle. If you have the type of system that has the syrup/water lines running through the base of the ice bin, ice it down well before a service call. If yours is self-refrigerated (and always on), it shouldn't matter.

We have to have ours done every couple of months depending on business. Pepsi just came twice last week since after the first guy came one head started tasting bad 2 days later so they had to come and redo them again.

Our service agreement with Pepsi allows us to have them service the heads as much as we need.

I own the equipment, but the local dist co can do service free because all WI theatres are national accounts. So emergency repairs typically are not a problem but the routine stuff can be harder to get done regularly (like cleaning diet pepsi lines and checking mix ratio). When we did the check the ice bins were empty and warm from sitting all night so I guess they may be off anyway. The MT Dew was off by quite a bit and of course on the heavy syrup side. I'll check with my Dubuque supplier. Madison supplier is the one I had some issue with.

Yah... having the syrup iced down is a big deal... it's thicker when cold. The diet is less so, but it still makes a difference.

If you can't find a brix kit in your area, let me know. I might be able to get one over here.

Jack

I'd bet if you look on Ebay you can find them pretty cheap.

And if a service man would make ANY adjustments to a "Warm" machine, I would say he is not very experienced!

If you look to Ebay for this, make sure you get the right adaptor for the type of valve you have.