cleaning beer lines, wait what?

good article for the beginning kegger in the new BYO. it says (and most sources seem to say) to pull off all your beer lines and clean them after each keg ideally. how exactly do you pull off your beer lines to clean them? this thread:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/easy-way-remove-beer-line-142565/
seems to say you can't? should i just shorten my line a few inches every time i clean it, that doesn't seem right?

Clean them - yes. Pull them all apart - no. Just push some cleaner through them.

That article is referring to when you have barbed connections for your hoses. They are a little tough to remove but not impossible. Personally I have MFL connections to as much as possible so that if I want to remove the line I just I untighten the connection. As for connecting to your shank.. That can be a little hard but if you wiggle the line to try to "stretch it sideways" you can get them off. It's a good idea to clean your whole setup after every keg. Some people will tell you that if the beer your replacing is similar to the one that was run prior (a Porter and a Stout) then you don't need to, but I do. I like to clean everything with oxyclean.

Agreed. Just push some sanitizer through the lines. Ideally, after every keg. However, there are times when you will have to break down the lines and clean out the crud build up in them. We use iodophor for cleaning out our lines, pumps and machines every day at our restaurant, especially the dairy lines for soft serve ice cream.

Iodophor is fine sanitizer but a totally ineffective cleaning agent.
One hopes the real regimen doesn't start and end with iodophor...

Cheers!

PBW ftw.

so it seems like most of you don't pull the lines on a normal basis. thanx for that!

i did mine last week. i put a quart of Star San'd water in the keg, then under 5 lbs pressure forced the solution thru the lines until it was all out. then when keg has beer, you'll force out the star san water in the first pour. this method wasted about 5-6 oz of beer, but was easier than taking the whole dual tap tower apart. hope this helps...

I've been taking the tap off, and filling the line with pure, undiluted BLC. It's not hard with a sankey tap, and picnic nozzles.

Leave that sit for a few hours, and then run hot water through it from the sink.
It seems to get them clean.

After kicking a keg, I do the following.
1. Rinse the keg out, then scrub keg and parts with oxyclean.
2. Pressurize the keg and hook it to the beer line. Push that oxyclean through the line and let it sit in there for a half hour.
3. Rinse the keg with clean water then pressurize. Run that clean water through the beer line to remove the oxyclean.
4. Put half a gallon of starstan in the cleaned keg, swish around and let sit for a few minutes. Then pressurize and run the starsan through the beer line until the keg is empty.

I now have a sanitized keg that can sit until I break the seal to fill with beer. And a clean beer line to hook up another keg to.
Maybe this technique seems silly to some, but it has worked for me so far.

I like that method Cider... my only concern is the loss of CO2... do you know it it takes a significant amount?

I bought a plastic gardening sprayer for like $12 and took the wand off the end. I can put the hose on my beer lines and pump BLC through them, let it sit, pump some more, and then take the sprayer off and rinse well with water.

So much easier than taking the hoses and faucets apart like I used to.

Jordo_nb said:

I like that method Cider... my only concern is the loss of CO2... do you know it it takes a significant amount?

Click to expand...

That's why I use this method https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-beer-line-cleaner-226497/

I don't think star san will clean Calcium Oxalate...IIRC. I keep a spare keg half full of No rinse Beer line cleaner. I just run it into the lines, and let it sit for 30 minutes, then push it out with beer. Leaves the lines sparkly clean. I usually do that once every other week or when I change kegs which ever comes first.

I like clean lines, bars do it much more often you know!

Originally Posted by Jordo_nb View Post
I like that method Cider... my only concern is the loss of CO2... do you know it it takes a significant amount?


I don't think I use very much CO2 at all in the cleaning process. I have a 5 gallon CO2 tank and the last time I've had it filled was this past June. I still have about a half tank. Then again, I only have 2 taps on my kegerator.