Sanitizing Your Kegerator

What do you all sanitize in your kegging setup and how do you keep it bug-free?

I completely dissemble and clean/sanitize my kegs before filling them with beer. But what about your hoses and disconnects? How often do you sanitize them and how do you do it?

I just run some starsan through my taps when cleaning the keg. helps clean the dip tube also. as for the fridge, i have a manual defrost. I unplug it, scrape the ice, wipe up the water, spray with starsan, wipe down again with paper towel, and reload everything back in it.

every 3-4 fills, i pull apart my cornies and clean everything...other than that its a couple shakes and a flush.

Purty much what Breirfel does... Starsan throught the lines when cleaning the blon keg... Piece of cake

Maybe every 10 kegs, I'll run BLC (beer line cleaner) through my lines just to make sure nothing is building up in the lines. But otherwise it's just starsan through the lines every couple kegs.

I do a soak with BLC every 2-3 kegs. But I do a 10min soak/rinse with iodophor between every keg.

Interesting..So you guys don't do
1. Hot water
2. Oxy Clean
3. Hot water
4. Star San
5. Cold water
?

I think that's overkill but watched Chris Knight's YouTube video and this is what he does every time he cleans a keg..overkill?
I was told by a head brewer that you should disconnect your beer lines between uses and clean them out thoroughly after every keg or they build up a nasty gunk and impart off flavors..
I'm sure the answer is somewhere in the middle.

I perosnally keep my lines connected until the keg's empty but have not been kegging lone enough to have a "
routine" about my cleaning yet.
I have up to this point been doing Star San and just keeping it in the beer line until I'm ready to connect a full keg.

BLC, Clean Flo or the like. This starsan bit is overkill.

I use a nice pressurized system to clean my lines and faucet in my kegerator. Right now it's commercial kegs only but I can change that quickly.

BLC or Cleanflo for me. THIS SYSTEM makes it easy to keep the solution in the line for 10 minutes, then run the rest through and 2 more runs with cold water to flush out the chemicals. Once done I disassemble the faucet and coupler and clean with a brush. Haven't had a single off flavor yet, plus I use all SS

skibumdc said:

I use a nice pressurized system to clean my lines and faucet in my kegerator. Right now it's commercial kegs only but I can change that quickly.

BLC or Cleanflo for me. THIS SYSTEM makes it easy to keep the solution in the line for 10 minutes, then run the rest through and 2 more runs with cold water to flush out the chemicals. Once done I disassemble the faucet and coupler and clean with a brush. Haven't had a single off flavor yet, plus I use all SS

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I have that same cleaning system and it works great for commercial sanke taps, but definitely not worth it for homebrew. For home brew you can just put the BLC in the empty keg. I would much rather buy 4 new corny kegs than pay $100 for that system for homebrew.

I only sanitize kegs before filling and never the lines. Here's what I do whenever I finish a keg:

• Rinse keg with hot water
• Mix 1 gallon of BLC in the keg (1 Tbs BLC to 1 gal hot water)
• Lid, shake well, pressurize with a bit of CO2
• Run about 1/2 gallon of the BLC through the tap to clean the lines and faucet.
• Rinse keg well with hot water.
• Put about a gallon of hot water in keg, pressurize.
• Run about 1/2 gallon clean water through tap to flush BLC and leave the line full of water.

It seems like a lot of steps, but it goes fast. Some may say that using BLC in the lines every keg is overkill, but the BLC does double duty as the cleaner for the kegs and I like the idea of consistent light cleanings instead of less frequent thorough cleanings. I don't use much CO2, just enough of a shot to get the liquid moving.

-Joe

1: rinse
2: Oxiclean soak
3: rinse
4: Starsan (flush lines)
5: drain and refill (No rinse)

drunkatuw said:

I have that same cleaning system and it works great for commercial sanke taps, but definitely not worth it for homebrew. For home brew you can just put the BLC in the empty keg. I would much rather buy 4 new corny kegs than pay $100 for that system for homebrew.

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I've got that bottle (didn't pay anywhere near 100 bucks though) and I have the adapters that allow me to use the swivel fittings on my lines to hook up to it. I figure it uses less co2 than using a corny keg. I'd like to trade it for one of the pump bottles to not use any co2, but I'll likely just adapt a pump of some sort to what I have.

skibumdc said:

I use a nice pressurized system to clean my lines and faucet in my kegerator. Right now it's commercial kegs only but I can change that quickly.

BLC or Cleanflo for me. THIS SYSTEM makes it easy to keep the solution in the line for 10 minutes, then run the rest through and 2 more runs with cold water to flush out the chemicals. Once done I disassemble the faucet and coupler and clean with a brush. Haven't had a single off flavor yet, plus I use all SS

Click to expand...

I do the same thing, more or less, using a $10 "weed killer" pressure canister from your local Home Dump or BLowe's with a few pieces of hardware from the LHBS.