Rusted shanks?

I've posted in various threads about issues I've had with off flavors in my recent beers and I narrowed it down to what I thought was issues with the line (may still be). So I started taking apart my Perlick faucets and when I did that I noticed the inside of my shanks appeared to be either rusted or had beer deposits on them. Anyone ever experience this before? If this is in fact rust I would have to image that would contribute to the off flavors. And any solutions for how to clean it?

Beer shanks are either stainless steel or chrome plated brass, neither of which will "rust". What you are seeing is either dried up beer or beer stone, both of which can be cleaned out with some PBW...

Cheers!

That's good to know, thanks! I don't have PBW but I have oxiclean free and BLC. I know oxiclean is pretty similar so maybe I'll try that first.

Any other suggestions? I tried oxiclean free and BLC and neither did the job. I left the oxiclean in over night and still didn't get rid of it. It sure looks like rust but it's hard to tell. Would PBW be that much more effective?

As day_tripper stated, very unlikely it's rust.

To remove beer stone, try something mildly acidic, like diluted vinegar or lemon/lime juice and a scrubby sponge or a Scotch-Brite pad. My SST boil kettle had built up a nice layer of beer stone on it after several batches and it came right off with a little lemon juice and a scrubby sponge.

Are they chrome plated faucets? That looks like brass that didn't get coated to me.

I'm pretty sure they are chrome shanks. The faucets I used were SS Perlicks. When I originally got the shanks they definitely looked either chrome or SS, the brown wasn't there when I first installed them a year ago.

I'll give vinegar or lemon juice a try and see if that does anything.

I put them in vinegar overnight and although it didn't get rid of it it does appear to have substantially improved. Of course I just eyeballed the vinegar and water and I had no idea about how much to dilute it with. I may try the BLC again and let it sit for a longer period of time. The bottle said 5-15 minutes but I'll probably try it for an hour and see if that gets rid of it completely.

Looks exactly like the chrome plated brass shanks I recently replaced. What you're seeing is the brass after the beer has striped the chrome off. Yes, it's true. The pH of your beer will remove chrome plating on your shanks. The only way around this is to go with stainless.

Beach

^ I'm starting to think it is in fact beer deposits because they look better now then they did before I tried cleaning them. I think I need to just give them a longer, or stronger, soak in some oxiclean/BLC.