A keg question

[william_shakes_beer]

1. The summer brewing season is over. I have 7 full kegs (my entire library) sitting full and quietly carbing up for the winter chill. Inevitably some of those kegs will go empty during the winter and get rinsed out and stored. I am debating whether to rinse and store half full of starsan or completely empty. Is there any known negative interractions between the stainless steel in a keg and the citric acid in starsan?

2. The kegs I have are sound and functional but scratched and discolored on the outside. Is there a way to clean up the appearance of the keg? I don't need shiny bright and new, just a little less crap. I was thinking steel wool in a vertical direction?

 

[Maylar]

I store my kegs dry after cleaning and rinsing. Outside, yeah a scrubby pad and a detergent like soft scrub works.

 

[Jwin]

1) I store one keg full of starsan made from distilled water. I purge it to the next clean keg with co2. Then I have a sanitized and purged keg. Assuming you mix it to proper dilution, I don't see any issue. I've never had one
2) barkeepers friend and a brillo pad. That'll shine them up nice, but may need something stronger for more stubborn gunk(decades old duct tape residue...)

 

[kh54s10]

I store mine empty, kind of... They usually sit with the remnants of the beer for a while until I get around to cleaning them. IMO having them filled with Starsan is unnecessary.

I used a wire wheel on my drill press, rocked the keg back and forth until all the old stickers etc were gone.

 

[passedpawn]

1. The summer brewing season is over. I have 7 full kegs (my entire library) sitting full and quietly carbing up for the winter chill. Inevitably some of those kegs will go empty during the winter and get rinsed out and stored. I am debating whether to rinse and store half full of starsan or completely empty. Is there any known negative interractions between the stainless steel in a keg and the citric acid in starsan?

2. The kegs I have are sound and functional but scratched and discolored on the outside. Is there a way to clean up the appearance of the keg? I don't need shiny bright and new, just a little less crap. I was thinking steel wool in a vertical direction?

I store empty kegs outside. They are on a rack on the side of my house (in the rain and sun). No problem. I leave about a cup of starsan inside them. Never any problem. However, NEVER leave bleach in stainless steel. It will eat the dip tube. Ask me how I know The starsan is just left over from cleaning. When I put one of them in service, I just shake up the starsan that's in there, dump it, then fill.

I store mine empty, kind of... They usually sit with the remnants of the beer for a while until I get around to cleaning them. IMO having them filled with Starsan is unnecessary.

I used a wire wheel on my drill press, rocked the keg back and forth until all the old stickers etc were gone.

It's a really bad idea to use metal brush, steel wool, or wire wheel unless it's non-ferrous metal (copper = OK, stainless = OK, normal steel = BAD). The reason is that it's almost gauranteed you'll embed iron into the SS, which will result in pits of rust. If you do/did use a wire brush, make sure to follow up with Barkeeper's Friend.

I believe I used some sort of solvent to remove the stickers from my keggles. Paint thinner maybe, or similar. Once all that stuff is off, Barkeeper's Friend will clean it up pretty well. But if you really want it clean, there's nothing better than an angle grinder, polishing pads, and fine grit polish. Then BKF. An hour of that will make it pretty sweet. ( I've got 10 cornies and I've got to admit I never even took the stickers off them).

 

[kh54s10]

It's a really bad idea to use metal brush, steel wool, or wire wheel unless it's non-ferrous metal (copper = OK, stainless = OK, normal steel = BAD). The reason is that it's almost gauranteed you'll embed iron into the SS, which will result in pits of rust. If you do/did use a wire brush, make sure to follow up with Barkeeper's Friend.

Probably true. I did this 4 years ago, I wiped them off pretty well afterward, I did not use BKF. I have seen no signs of rust. They stay in the basement. My basement is pretty dry.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

Ok, thanks for all the replies. I'll start with soft scrub and a scotch brite pad (because I have it) and then graduate to BKF if that doesn't yield acceptable results. To be clear; typical retired cornies are naked stainless steel with no coating/clearcoat. True?

FWIW I was thinking steel wool because in a previous life I worked in a medical facility and was involved in designing custom stainless steel casework for a lab. One day the medical staff manager came into the site and complained that the grain of the stainless wasn't all going in the same direction. The fabricator came right over to "correct" the defect. They spent about 20 minutes rubbing plain stainless steel over the offending panel to change the grain direction from horizontal to vertical.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]To be clear; typical retired cornies are naked stainless steel with no coating/clearcoat. True?[...]

Between the stickers/residual sticker cement, yes, they're uncoated
A heat gun and a dry towel make quick work of both.

fwiw, after breaking down and cleaning "new to me" kegs to within an inch of their lives, and replacing all the o-rings, I use a really coarse Gator scrub pad with a BKF paste all around the outside to create a vertical brushed look. Along with truly cleaning down to bare metal it is very good at disguising dents and dings...

Cheers!