How do I clean old beer taps?

I really did search but didn't find my answer.

I am building a kegarator and purchased some used beer taps. I was thinking I would run some soapy water or Oxyclean through them then Starsan. Any suggestions? Do I need to disassemble them?

I use to be a bartender, I'm not sure exactly how clean we got the taps by doing this but it was our typical ritual in cleaning the taps & anything else that we poured alcohol through. We'd simply submerge them in soda water or seltzer water over night.

How dirty do they appear?

I would disassemble to the extent possible and then soak overnight in PBW (Oxyclean Free if PBW is unavailable). See if you can get a brush to scrub inside a bit as well. I wouldn't expect it to be too hard to get them clean. Just do a brief soak in starsan before hooking them back up.

The taps are fairly dirty. I am going to take them apart and use oxy. Thanks for the help.

DO NOT USE SOAP! You'll have a hard time getting it totally rinsed, which in turn will kill your head retention. Just last week I completely disassembled my kegerator set up for a thorough cleaning. Fill a keg with warm beer line cleaner (BLC) and run it through all your lines (you may even consider replacing the lines) and through the tap faucets. I also took all my faucets off, took them apart (they break down to 3 or 4 pieces) and soaked them in the BLC too (you can use PBW or OxyClean if you need to clean them first). Scrub all the parts with a small brush. Then put it all together and run water through your system for 1 minute to flush the BLC. It can be a decent amount of work, but I really only do this once a year and it will improve the quality of your draft beer.
Good luck, and let us know if you have any other questions.

So I bought some old taps off craigslist the other day one is in nice shape but the other one has chrome coming off and the brass was tarnish on the outside. Is this one safe to use still or should I just toss it?

beer line cleaner BLC and then break them down and soak them in PBW. thats what i do. if they are really old i will replace all the gaskets too.

there are no gaskets that came with them. Will have to purchase new gasket. One that the brass is coming through is a Cornelius tap from the 60s.

HeyNoPie said:

How dirty do they appear?

I would disassemble to the extent possible and then soak overnight in PBW (Oxyclean Free if PBW is unavailable). See if you can get a brush to scrub inside a bit as well. I wouldn't expect it to be too hard to get them clean. Just do a brief soak in starsan before hooking them back up.

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+1

PBW is a miracle, if it is still dirty after 24 hours in a solution of that then i would chuck it!

I_B_Mongo said:

Just last week I completely disassembled my kegerator set up for a thorough cleaning. Fill a keg with warm beer line cleaner (BLC) and run it through all your lines (you may even consider replacing the lines) and through the tap faucets. I also took all my faucets off, took them apart (they break down to 3 or 4 pieces) and soaked them in the BLC too (you can use PBW or OxyClean if you need to clean them first). Scrub all the parts with a small brush. Then put it all together and run water through your system for 1 minute to flush the BLC. It can be a decent amount of work, but I really only do this once a year and it will improve the quality of your draft beer.
Good luck, and let us know if you have any other questions.

Click to expand...

I did this too last week, only I did replace the beer lines. I also disassembled the QDs and cleaned them

So is it ok if the chrome has came off the tap. Alot of people were mentioning the lead transfer.