Do I need to clean the cornie?

I just emptied my cornie keg and have a hefeweizen ready for the keg. Rather than clean/rinse/sanitize it can I simply take the cornie lid off and fill it up with the hefe. Any chance of off flavors from the prior beer? Guess I am gettting lazy.

You might get away with it once, or many times, but it's going to bite you eventually.

Since a hefe derives flavor from the yeast. I wouldn't want to mix the sediment from another type of beer into it. Thats just me though. In the end you will get bit.

Why even chance it? You spent all this time, effort and $ brewing the hefe.

It takes 10 minutes to disassemble, clean and sanitize.

Scrub-a-dub-dub!

i'm pretty lazy when it comes to cleaning... but since you have the lid off, you might as well throw some water in and put a brush to it. I almost never do the connectors and havent had any trouble...

Remember that a keg is just a big bottle. Would you bottle your beer in uncleaned bottles?

Rinsing out, tearing down and sanitizing the keg takes less than 10 minutes. But if you don't want to fully tear it down, and least rinse it well and then put some sanitizer in there and shake it up.

YooperBrew said:

Remember that a keg is just a big bottle. Would you bottle your beer in uncleaned bottles?

Rinsing out, tearing down and sanitizing the keg takes less than 10 minutes. But if you don't want to fully tear it down, and least rinse it well and then put some sanitizer in there and shake it up.

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thats a good way of looking at it. I am going to give it a good clean. I have high hopes for this hefe so don't want any regrets due to my laziness.

I don't always take mine completely apart. A rinse with hot water, then a short soak with 1 gallon of oxyclean, shake, dispense it out of both poppets, rinse. 1 gallon of sanitizer, shake, rest, shake, dispense all of it through both poppets. I'll ususually do that when I JUST kicked a keg and it was a beer that went relatively quickly. Certainly not something to do with an ex barleywine or Flanders Red keg.

What do you do when you REALLY clean out a keg?

Curious, as the above is what I usually do, adding the step of taking out the posts, poppets and soaking them in star san after rinsing and checking for debris. I then put it all together, lube the gaskets,dump in a gallon of star san, pressure test, shake and dispense out all the star san.

Is this a good cleaning? I don't use any brushes or hot water.

Maybe a total hot water scrub every 2 to 3 times is in order?

time to order more kegs!

Bobby_M said:

I don't always take mine completely apart. A rinse with hot water, then a short soak with 1 gallon of oxyclean, shake, dispense it out of both poppets, rinse. 1 gallon of sanitizer, shake, rest, shake, dispense all of it through both poppets. I'll ususually do that when I JUST kicked a keg and it was a beer that went relatively quickly. Certainly not something to do with an ex barleywine or Flanders Red keg.

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What do you do for "serious cleaning"? Oxiclean followed by rinsing and star san with posts removed seems pretty elaborate cleaning to me.......

Heineken said:

I just emptied my cornie keg and have a hefeweizen ready for the keg. Rather than clean/rinse/sanitize it can I simply take the cornie lid off and fill it up with the hefe. Any chance of off flavors from the prior beer? Guess I am gettting lazy.

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Good lord captain lazy pants. On a sit filled with thousands of nutty, unnecessary questions, you sir take the cake. Enjoy it with your multi flavored beer.

IrregularPulse said:

What do you do for "serious cleaning"? Oxiclean followed by rinsing and star san with posts removed seems pretty elaborate cleaning to me.......

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Never said I removed the posts...were you talking to chefmike?
For me a serious cleaning involves removing the posts, diptubes, and poppets. I sometimes boil the posts and poppets. I also take a 1/4" OD long brush to the inside of the bev dip tube. I scrub the inside of the corny with a dedicated toilet cleaning brush while it's doing the oxy soak.

The biggest difference with my lazy in-between cleaning is that I mix up only 1 gallon of the oxy and sanitizer and the cleaning of the posts/poppets/diptubes is done purely by forcing liquids through them. IOW, no mechanical cleaning at all.

I plan to mock up a little cleaning device that has a gas/bev disconnect connected to a TEE so that I can use my autosiphon to pump liquids from the keg into the posts and diptubes without pressurizing the keg. It's a bit of a waste of CO2 the way I currently do it.

Bobby_M said:

I scrub the inside of the corny with a dedicated toilet cleaning brush while it's doing the oxy soak.

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I would guess the "dedicated" aspect with this type of brush is preferrable?

Unless you are changing your handle to "heiny keg", in which case it is lazy and acceptable. Why have 2 brushes!?


Thanks for the idea though... I need to get a long brush for that dip tube.

and a toilet brush.

I've done it while just being lazy.... kicked a pale ale during a party, I re-filled with another pale ale... hooked it up and poured a stout... Tapped the other half of the first pale ale...

I'd be carefull mixing styles... Hopefully the hefe doesn't go into the keg that the RIS just finished in...