Cleaner taste ruins beer

[coyotlgw]

I kegged my Cherry Pale Ale in my brand new three-gallon keg. It carbonated via sugar primer (no gas tank yet) ad as of a couple weeks ago tasted awesome. The bottled version was nice, but the keg version was creamy and just fantastic.

The keg sat in a fridge at 45 degrees for another two weeks and I finally had a chance to try it again last night. After trying two glasses and trying to place the off taste that I was getting, I suddenly remembered why it seemed familiar. There was a hint of the caustic lime-ish smelling cleaner that originally came in the keg. I had not detected this before but there is now is, ruining my fine ale.

Is this normal? Can you ever really get that crap out of the keg?

 

[jfrizzell]

Did you replace all of the o-rings? What was the origin of the keg? Are you sure it wasn't previously used for carpet cleaning or window tinting?

 

[coyotlgw]

I got it from Midwest and it was previously owned by the 7-up corporation. It was shipped refurbished with their nasty cleaner in the bottom

 

[Bobby_M]

I think you're smelling 7-up syrup, not a cleaner. When they say "refurbished" they really mean, "not leaking". It says nothing about whether they replaced the lid O-ring or not. You should soak it overnight with oxyclean and replace the lid O-ring at the very least.

 

[the_bird]

If that stuff was still in there, that implies that not only did you not clean out the keg like you needed to, but you didn't sanitize it either...

 

[coyotlgw]

Actually, I cleaned it with hot soapy water, let that sit several hours, then rinsed, let that sit as well, and then filled it with Idophor solution and left it for a day. After drying it still had a faint scent of the original cleaner.

 

[olllllo]

If I have a keg like that, I clean it and then let it air out for days. Then I rinse it out and sanitize. That obviously requires some leadtime.