People, clean your picnic taps!

[urg8rb8]

I have a keg filled with 2+ years old of a barelywine that I sample every once in a while. Unfortunately, I've been a bit disappointed because it had a slight funky flavor to it. It wasn't bad but it just didn't taste right. So I would just leave it alone and let it age longer to just sample later. I noticed that always the first poured out sample always tasted funky but the second sample tasted much better.

I decided to just disconnect the tap line and take it apart and clean it. And to my disgusting surprise, it had a nasty gunk of something in the line where the tap was. It was slimy! So after clean and sanitizing the tap, I put it back on the keg and poured a pull snifter glass and the damn barleywine was so freaking delicious!!!! Dark fruit notes all over the place and couldn't detect the 15% ABV at all!

TLDR: Clean and sanitize your picnic taps often!

 

[BargainFittings]

Yes this is important.

I had a keg of home made wine that I thought had turned. Big slime mass in the picnic tap.

The wine was great.

 

[Jim311]

Had this happen in my keezer lines too. I push a good bit of sanitizer thru my lines on each new keg I put on.

 

[Peruvian802]

I run oxy-clean through my lines after each keg and then sanitizer before hooking up a new beer keg. This is actually really easy as I always have a spare keg to mix up oxy-clean in and then push through with CO2. I store all of my kegs under pressure with some santizer in them to I can blow out the sanitizer after the oxy-clean.

 

[Jim311]

I don't even have a spare keg just for sanitizer. I obviously need to sanitize and clean my kegs before I put beer in them, so I just push some of my sanitizing solution that's already being used to sanitize the keg thru the lines.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I use a hose/picnic tap to sample from my "barrel aged" beers. I sanitize the keg post each time and clean/sanitize the hose/tap after each sample.

Back in the day my kegerator was a keg in a standard fridge with a picnic tap (open the door, pour a beer). I got lazy about cleaning the tap and was totally grossed out by what it looked like when I cleaned it. I try to stay on top of that now.

 

[urg8rb8]

Yeah I was disgusted as well when I saw the gunk in there. Now the beer tastes so amazing. I just pulled half a glass to remind myself how awesome it tastes now!

 

[Greytop]

For my keezer, I use BLC (beer line cleaner) in a bucket with a little fountain pump from Harbor Freight. I just open a tap with the bucket underneath and let each run for 15 minutes. I do the same with my picnic tap using a rubber band to keep it open. I give each a rinse with clear water and then run the Star-San through when I clean and sanitize my kegs. Even with your lines under refrigeration gunk can build up. I put so much time and effort into brewing that I would hate for some beer line nasty to mess with my brews.