DIY corny keg cleaner

[Marshal6]

So after taking apart my corny's again to clean and sanitize them for the next batch I decided there had to be a better way so here is what I came up with. Essentialy its a venturi style sprayer that I purchased from Lowe's its one of thoes things you put concentrated weed killer or fertilizer or whatever else in and hook it up to a hose and viola you have a sprayer. With a simple modification ( pulling the spray tip off ) you can hook an 1/2" ID hose line to the sprayer and then run that to a "T" from the "T" you run lines to you gas in and beer out posts. Now you can fill the sprayer with PBW and rinse for a while, dump the keg and fill the sprayer with what ever sanitizer you use and rinse. The great part is it doesnt dilute what ever you put into the sprayer so you could pour in a bunch of sanitizer and after you have let it run for what ever length of time you like you can pour whatever is left over back into you sanitizer container. Seems to work great although it is not exactly the most "green" DIY project as it uses quite a bit of water.

 

[ben_j8mmin]

I'd Like to see an action shot !!

 

[Yuri_Rage]

You have to host your pictures somewhere other than within your e-mail account to get them to show up. ImageShack and PhotoBucket are popular.

 

[Marshal6]

The second one is an "action" shot but its just a PBW water mix going through the lines if you look close you can see a jet of water coming out the pressure relief valve hole. Opps my bad didnt know the photos didnt work hopefully they are up now

 

[lmg95]

lol... that's definitely an action shot there!

 

[samc]

On HBT there are similar ideas using a pump and running in a tub or sink. Much more efficient use of water, I think. I built one but hardly ever bother to use it. Simpler to just Oxyclean soak for a few hours and rinse.

 

[homebrewer_99]

I just add about .5 - 1 gal of water/cleaner solution into the carboy then put my carboy brush in a drill to clean it. Works really fast...
I do the same thing when I need to sanitize it also...

 

[Yorg]

I have built one using a pump to recirculate.
You need to choke of the gas post a little (inline valve or some such) or the liquid finds the least resistance and comes straight back out rather than moving through the liquid post down the tube to the bottom.

 

[Skrimpy]

This is awesome. Only need to tear it apart when one of the seals starts leaking! No more wasting CO2 to clean! Fill with Oxyclean and let sit a day. Turn on the water. Fill with iodine/starsan and let sit a while. Then push water. As long as the water is clean...I'm building one.

 

[Elfmaze]

nice pressure!

 

[Marshal6]

Ive seen the other systems using pumps and its just to much stuff in my opinion. I wanted to make my process simpler. This is a cheap easy solution. I like the fact that you get sanitizer or cleaner flowing over all surfaces that the beer touches without having to disassemble the whole thing. If you turn down the water at the hose you get less of a jet coming out the top.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I love gadgets, but (no offense intended) I'm not in love with this one. When I clean a keg, I use about a gallon of Star San solution. The sanitizer goes into the keg, I shake it for a few seconds, then pressurize the keg and run the sanitizer through the beer out post. I can use the same gallon of sanitizer for several kegs. Since I force carbonate, there isn't much residue left in any given keg, so I don't find that I need a separate cleaning and sanitizing step.

 

[Dpostman]

I love gadgets, but (no offense intended) I'm not in love with this one. When I clean a keg, I use about a gallon of Star San solution. The sanitizer goes into the keg, I shake it for a few seconds, then pressurize the keg and run the sanitizer through the beer out post. I can use the same gallon of sanitizer for several kegs. Since I force carbonate, there isn't much residue left in any given keg, so I don't find that I need a separate cleaning and sanitizing step.

This is pretty much exactly what I do. every Batch I brew gives me 2 and a half kegs. So I have to clean 3 kegs. I also fixed up an adapter to pressurize my kegs with my air compressor for washing so that I don't waste CO2. A hand pump would do also if I was not so lazy ;-)

dp