Cleaning Beer Lines - Oxyclean/PBW???

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bigben

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Is using oxyclean or pbw ok for beer lines?

I know a lot of people use oxyclean/pbw for cleaning the kegs and stuff, but do you also pump the oxyclean or pbw through the beer lines? Or do you use a seperate beer line cleaner when pumping through the lines?

Also, if you do pump oxyclean/pbw through the lines can you please specify which one. I can understand PBW being ok, but not sure about oxyclean.

One more thing... Does anyone sanitize their beer line? I've had my kegerator for almost 2 years and I have never sanitized the beer line. I clean it regularly with beer line cleaner...but never sanitized,


Thanks!
 
I use BLC and hot water as the instructions instruct. After filling the lines and letting them soak a short time I flush them with hot water. Been working well for me. I have been doing this every other keg refill.
 
thebull said:
I use BLC and hot water as the instructions instruct. After filling the lines and letting them soak a short time I flush them with hot water. Been working well for me. I have been doing this every other keg refill.
Yea i know, like i said i currently use BLC to clean my beer lines. I was just wondering if a cleaner like PBW or Oxyclean could be used to save time since im cleaning the keg with it already.
 
I'd say as long as your beer line never went empty and thus dried out with beer in the lines, you could use something else.

but BLC has an acidic nature that helps remove 'old beer.
 
I tend to run sanitizer through my beer lines whenever I'm cleaning kegs. But, I still mix up some BLC once in a while. just seems to work better than anything else.
 
I use BLC, but have only used it once or twice in 3 yrs. I figure I have new beer going through the lines every month or so and usually just replace the entire line when looking bad. If they don't look nasty just stained I use the BLC for "comfort" until I change the lines. I clean everything when I replace the lines so I feel good about cleanliness.
 
ok so pbw is a no go for lines i guess. I just read people saying they pump oxyclean/pbw thru the keg to clean it. I was just wondering where it is being pump to, if not out the tap.
 
For cleaning kegs you can either diassemble the keg and soak all parts in PBW or just fill and soak the keg. If you have an extra keg(s) you can keep 1 filled with PBW and 1 filled with Star-San and use those for purging your beer lines and kegs using co2 saving some time, effort and mess.

You can take the output of 1 keg filled with fluid and using disconnects and tubing tie into the output/input of your second keg, open the relief valve on the 2nd keg and apply pressure to your 1st transfering the liquid.

No I do not purge my lines with PBW I exclusively use Star-san every couple weeks on my standard taps and lines until I get a all forward seal faucets. (I cant wait until I get rid of my darn sticky standard faucets, God Bless forward seal faucets)
 
Maybe I am the odd duck here. Tonight I used 130F PBW through all my beer lines followed by clean hot water rinse and then starsan. Then I blew the lines dry with CO2. Maybe not the best but it is what I had on hand to use at the time.
 
The reason you don't use PBW in plastic is because the soap in it is attracted to the plastic and plates it making is milky and slippery to the touch. This is according to Charlie Talley of Five-Star chemicals from "The Session" on The Brewing Network. PBW amazingly has a surfactant in it that is "hidden" until plastic comes into play. I am not saying use stuff like dish washing soap that contain surfactants, because those aren't chemically hidden like they are for home brewing use (ie. they will kill your head retention even just using a beer glass cleaned in them) in PBW. You guys should really check out that show on the archives, very informative. I has listened twice and am doing so today and writing everything down. I would suggest you guys save your time and write it down from the first, :D. I am an idiot that apparently needs constant reasons to keep remembering I am an idiot, lol. I don't know if I will ever go back to using PBW after I run out of oxyclean, due to me loving oxyclean. I do know I am going to swap to Star-San.

Edit: Sorry, I relistened and it is Star-San that causes the slippyness on the plastic lines. So, PBW in this post really means Star-San, lol. Sorry, I thought I had my stuff right.
 
I've only been brewing with Kegs for a little over a year, but I have never disassembled one to clean it. When I blow a keg, I...
1) Rinse it out thouroughly
2) run hot water through it to purge any remaining beer in the keg
3) fill with PBW and sit for 20-30 minutes
4) run PBW through beer lines and tap
5) dump PBW and rinse with water
6) fill with sanitizer water (Iodaphor) and run that through the beer line
7) close keg with remaining sanitizer and to wait for it's next batch of beer
 
I used to just run oxyclean through my lines. Then one day, I needed to bump my More Beer order up to get the free shipping. Added the BLC to it. When I cleaned my lines with BLC, you wouldn't believe the stuff that came out of them..... I'm gonna use BLC forever now.

Allan
 
My kegerator sat for quite some time with some old light beer in the beer line. I ran have ran a number of cleaners through it including BLC. It seems clean but it still has a yellow tint to it. Do i just need to get a new line?
 
Make sure you get a very thin brush that can go inside of the line that is in the beer keg. I know people that never can clean that out not even a wash bath. and it can over time hold guk in it and you will have ****ty smelling or tasting beer from that small buildup.
 
Confession time: I never actually *clean* my beer lines, per se. However, whenever a keg kicks, I always clean it immediately (i.e., the keg and lines never sit around to dry out or cake up). The last part of cleaning my keg is to dump in a couple of gallons of StarSan solution, seal up the keg and give it a good shake. I then dump out most of the StarSan, but I leave a couple of quarts in the keg. I then hook up a CO2 tank and the beer line and run the last couple of quarts through the beer line. As soon as I start getting bubbles, I stop, and leave the beer line filled with StarSan. I then pressurize the keg to 15 psi and store it, ready to receive the next batch of beer.

Note that there is still some StarSan in the keg. When I shake it, it produces a lot of bubbles which take days to settle out, such that when I go to fill my keg, there is still some StarSan in the bottom to be dumped out first.

Once the next batch of beer has carbed up, I reconnect the (still StarSan-filled) beer line and pour the first few ounces into a measuring cup to be dumped. Then the beer line is filled with fresh beer and ready to go.
 
When I blow a keg, I...
[...]
3) fill with PBW and sit for 20-30 minutes

This is the part that I have trouble with.

It takes 5 gallons to "fill" a keg. The instructions for PBW recommend a concentration of between 3/4 and 1 oz. of PBW per gallon of water. Even on the low end of that scale, you're using almost 4 oz. of PBW to clean a keg.

I don't know about you, but that's a lot of PBW to me! And that stuff is expensive! If I used that much PBW every time I kicked a keg, I'd be spending a fortune on PBW.
 
If you make your own PBW using Sun Oxy and TSP90 from your local hardware store it's way cheaper. Use a 70/30 mixture of Sun Oxy and TSP90. I use about 1.5 ounces for my mixture. I've been using it for a few months now and it's great. I have a spare keg with the mixture that I run through my lines when a keg kicks and follow that up with some Starsan...never had any problems.
 
I run PBW through my lines after I blow a keg. If it's good enough to remove the toughest gunk everywhere else in my brewery, I trust it cleans my lines. I have some BLC and use that occasionally to mix things up, but primarily it's PBW.
 
If you make your own PBW using Sun Oxy and TSP90 from your local hardware store it's way cheaper. Use a 70/30 mixture of Sun Oxy and TSP90. I use about 1.5 ounces for my mixture. I've been using it for a few months now and it's great. I have a spare keg with the mixture that I run through my lines when a keg kicks and follow that up with some Starsan...never had any problems.

Just got this today to make some PBW. 16ounces of TSP90 / 56 ounces of Sun Oxi = 29%. Am I thinking correctly that I can mix the two of these together per your equation and make 4.5lbs of PBW?

8531471429_771ef1211c_c.jpg
 
There is some confusion about whether to mix by volume or by weight. I would suggest mixing by weight is probably correct because it takes crystal size out of the equation.

I couldn't find the TSP/90 but I just got some Lundmark TSP which says "contains Sodium Meta-Silicate" on the back. I read a post that said it was 100% sodium meta-silicate but I haven't seen anything that confirms that directly. Anyway I'm going to give it a try.

By the way, I was looking to see if there was a substitute for BLC so I looked at a couple of MSDS's. It is basically concentrated potassium hydroxide solution. One contained sodium meta-silicate as well as potassium hydroxide. BLC that refers to a "chelating agent" probably contains meta-silicate. Food grade potassium hydroxide can be bought inexpensively as "pH up".
 
My understanding from working in a institutional setting for 14 years is 140F to rinse, 160F wash and 180F final rinse for sanitizing, this is the process I use and then every three months or so I will run some BLC through the entire system followed by a 180F rinse of all equipment.
 
If you make your own PBW using Sun Oxy and TSP90 from your local hardware store it's way cheaper. Use a 70/30 mixture of Sun Oxy and TSP90. I use about 1.5 ounces for my mixture. I've been using it for a few months now and it's great. I have a spare keg with the mixture that I run through my lines when a keg kicks and follow that up with some Starsan...never had any problems.

Hi redsoxfan, just out of curiosity. How did you learn about this do it yourself PBW?
 
kombat said:
This is the part that I have trouble with.

It takes 5 gallons to "fill" a keg. The instructions for PBW recommend a concentration of between 3/4 and 1 oz. of PBW per gallon of water. Even on the low end of that scale, you're using almost 4 oz. of PBW to clean a keg.

I don't know about you, but that's a lot of PBW to me! And that stuff is expensive! If I used that much PBW every time I kicked a keg, I'd be spending a fortune on PBW.

I use 1oz per five gallons and leave it for 30min and have never had trouble getting it clean. When I got my first keg it was used and the inside was stained bad so I let it sit over night and that mixture got it clean without even scrubbing.
 
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