Clean your kegs!

I pulled one of my kegs apart tonight just out of curiosity and HOLY CRAP there was some nasty stuff in there. I usually just spray them out real good with a hose and hit them with my carboy brush, but from now on rest assured I will be pulling the fittings and tubes and cleaning them after every fill.

I break 'em down and clean 'em every time. I know it's "overkill" to some -- but my system is clean as a whistle.

It's also just not all that hard. Considering the amount of time I spend on the rest of the beermaking process, it's probably one of the easiest things I do.

I clean every time as well. Takes all of 5 minutes to ensure the beer will taste great.

What else is there to do during a 60 minute mash or a 60-90 minute boil? I drink and clean things and somtimes break things and sometimes hurt myself....

Seriously, it just makes sense, a quick twist of a ratchet and let the poppets and tubes soak overnight when you kill the keg, no big deal right? I just assumed that was the way everyone did it.

Is so easy and quick, there's no reason not to clean your kegs after every use.

I clean and replace o-rings every time (except lid)--After spending the time to brew, monitor fermentation, etc. it's totally worth it to spend the extra time and 10 cents to ensure a clean keg. Same goes with beer line--flush with BLC between every beer.

I rinse and sanitize after each keg blows. I completely pull it apart every 3 or 4 beers. I haven't had an issue yet. I do flush the lines with BLC after every keg though. I also disassemble the tap and soak it in BLC for 15 mins every couple kegs as well.

I don't replace the o-rings every time but I do fully break down my keg soak everything in oxi clean and rinse well. So far so good.

muse435 said:

I don't replace the o-rings every time but I do fully break down my keg soak everything in oxi clean and rinse well. So far so good.

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Same here. It takes all of 5 minutes to break it down and fill it with hot water and oxiclean. Rinse thoroughly the next day and that's it!
Actually, the next day I also fill the clean keg with a little bit of hot water and oxiclean and run that throught the beer line I was using. Then when I've rinsed it several times I put clean hot water in it and run that through the line. Then everything is clean.

So I just got some kegs yesterday. It looks like oxiclean is what to use to clean it out? I use that to clean my bottles so I am familiar with it. After oxiclean and rinsing do you sterilize with starsan?

Yes. Oxyclean soak and shake. Push through beer lines for 30 seconds. Rinse rinse rinse rinse rinse and then on 3rd or 4th fill up, push through beer lines for 30 seconds. Fill with water and starsan, shake like mad and push through beer lines for 30 seconds and then pull the pressure relief valve, open lid and pour our remainder. Sanitized keg and lines!

So I didn't use hot water with my oxyclean soak. I checked for any residue and they seemed squeaky clean. What do you think?

I built a CIP system for cleaning kegs and carboys using a 1HP sump pump, a few PVC fittings, and a couple of QDs. I invert the keg on the spray wand and hook up the QDs and that sucker gets CLEAN after a minute or two of pumping hot PBW solution through it. I set it up while I am cleaning up after a brewday, and just dump my hot PBW solution from cleaning the brewery into the keg cleaner reservoir.

In fact, I have considered making a little camlock adapter for that system so that I can hook it directly up to the rest of my brewery connections and use it for the kettle and whatnot, too.

I actually happen to have a pump like that lying around. You just pop some holes in the top of the PVC that is inside the keg?

Basically. I just made my own little sprayball using a PVC cap and drilling a bunch of tiny holes in it, then gluing it to a short section of PVC pipe to make a spray wand that the keg sits over. The sump pump sits in a bucket with about 1-2 gallons of solution and pumps straight up into the wand, with a PVC valve & T-fitting to divert some of the flow off to the QDs.

something like:

spray wand
male threaded fitting->PVC pipe->PVC cap w/holes

spray wand connection
pump->T->female threaded fitting->wand

keg connections
pump->T->valve->T->hose barbs->tubing->gas & liquid QDs

There are some very short sections of PVC pipe glued in to connect the pieces together. It took me maybe 20 minutes to put everything together using my tubing cutter and some PVC glue.


The only slightly tricky part was finding the correct pieces to go from the 1.5" connection on the sump pump to the 1/2" connections for the rest of the stuff.