Cleaning CO2 Lines in a Kegarator?

Hi All,

I've been kegging beer for about 8 months now, and my kegerator has gone through a number of modifications. For the moment, now i have capacity for about 4 kegs with a single regulator and a 4-way CO2 distributor.

By a repetitively doing a newbie mistake that i think just about everyone must make, i heat up a newly filled keg to 30-40 PSI to force carb, shake like hell and then accidently open the valve to one of the other kegs. Basically what i get is a beer explosion in the C02 line between keg a (30psi) and keg b(8-10 psi). Now there's crusty beer in my CO2 lines. As far as i can tell, this issue hasn't been changing the taste of my beer but i would like to fix it.

Is it easier to cut out all of the vinyl tubing and redo the CO2 lines to ensure a well sanitized kegerator, or is there a simple method of cleaning this out?

How and when should i clean the 4-way CO2 distributor?

I've never cleaned and re-used CO2 lines, but I guess you could if you sanitised them and then let them dry out well.

My manifold has check valves on each "output" to prevent that from happening, but I have had beer up the co2 line from not haveing the line valve open and "charged" before attaching.

The "best" thing to do is to get some one way check valves and replace the tubing. If you really just want to save these lines then I would go buy some BLC (Beer Line Cleaner) and run it through the lines. The easiest way to do that is to fill up an empty keg with the BLC and pressurize it then turn the keg upside down while connected to the gas in line. One at a time without any Co2 hooked up on the system, depress the other gas in connections to allow the BLC to run through the lines. After they all run clean blow lots of Co2 through them to dry them. Again I think replacing the lines is the best move here though.