cleaning beer out of a regulator?

[Sea]

Yup, it happened.

After seven years of smugly assuring myself that check valves are unnecessary if you know what you are doing. For seven years i was right, but a freak accident with my temp controller caused my keezer to hit a chilly 19 degrees. Well, a couple of full kegs backflowed when the frozen liquid expanded enough to reach the gas dip tube. a mixture of apfelwine and IPA was dripping out of the weep hole on my regulator all night.

I will be installing check valves shortly, but my question is this:

How do i clean the sticky icky out of the reg? The only one I've disassembled in the past never worked right again.

 

[Catt22]

Regulators are fairly simple devices consisting primarily of the main body, a diaphram, a needle valve and corresponding orifice, a spring and an adjustment screw, one or two gauges, a barbed fitting, a small shut off valve (often with a built in check valve. I would disassemble it and keep the parts in order so you can put it back together properly. I clean mine occasionally by soaking all of the parts in Oxyclean except the gauges. I then rinse all the parts well and let air dry. Before I reassemble the regulator, I coat all of the rubber parts with food grade silicone and wipe off any excess with a soft cloth. I've never had one fail to function after cleaning this way. Be sure to clean the gas line and keg connectors too. You can buy over-haul kits for most regulators if need be.