How do you clean Draft beer lines?

[Kyle Richards]

How does everyone clean their beer lines...? Just run starsan through lines with an empty keg? Or do you use a specialised line cleaner? And how often? Every keg?

Cheers!

[Cain Harland]

Liquid Line Cleaner

then you can either buy a device to pump it through or make one. There is thread somewhere on here about making one its where I got the idea but I cant find it.

But the parts list for mine was:

Pressure Sprayer 5 litre $12.75nz

Carbontaion cap $12.99us

PVC tube to replace the rubber one that comes with the sprayer - also mega 10 $1.50

hose clamps

So you just take the rubber tube off (I'm sure it would leave yuck taste in your beer line) attach the PVC one, attach carbonation cap to the other end of the PVC tube with hose clamps.

Make 1-2 L of cleaner pump through beer lines, I catch it in a jug and throw the first bit with beer away then recycle the rest pumping the whole lot through 1 tap pouring back into sprayer then doing the next. Then I do them all a second time, I figure the soak while your doing the others can't hurt. Then rinse the sprayer out and pump some water through the lines, the cleaner is more toxic than star san and you don't want to drink it.

The proper method seems to involve taking the tap apart pumping the other way but that looks like way to much effort. Recommended time I think is every 2 weeks.

I also push the last liter or so of iodophore (like star san) out of a keg through a tap before refilling it. You have the sanitiser in the keg already and want a bit of CO2 in there to displace the O2.

[Kyle Richards]

Ok so line cleaner is the way to go. What is the benefit for getting a separate pumping device when you can use and empty keg and pump through with CO2?

I was just reading Sodium Percarbonate (oxyclean or napisan) is a popular brewery cleaning agent. 

[Cain Harland]

I think the liquid line cleaner is more aggressive than the alternatives. The big bottle worked out dirt cheap per liter.

Having a separate pump lets you clean your lines when you don't have a spare keg and saves CO2. I wanted to clean whenever I felt the need and didn't want to fill a keg with CO2 just to push a small amount of liquid out except when I'm filling the keg and want a CO2 blanket in there any way. If your happy to just clean the line before you keg or have one sitting round full of cleaner then you don't need it.

I got rid of my PVC lines because of balancing issues and changed to narrower LDPE ones. While I was looking into it people did recon the PVC left a taste in the beer.

Ive had a couple of occasions where cleaning the lines has made a big improvement to what comes out of them.

[Scott H]

Every time I change a keg or one goes empty I.

Rinse the empty keg and full it with some clean water and purge the lines. I then empty the keg 1/2 - 2/3 full it with hot water and PBW then purge the line with that, disassembled the tap and soak in a container with same mixture. I dismantle the keg and put the bits inside it and leave it to soak for a Coke of hours then put a bucket over top of the keg and invert for another couple of hours. I then rinse the keg and its parts throughly full with water again and purge the lines rinse and reassemble the tap. Dump the water and chuck a few litres of starsan in it pressurise it and purge the lines. I will leave the lines full of starsan until I tap the next keg.

[Kyle Richards]

Tight.

So you dont use a separate line cleaner eh?

[Scott H]

Nah just PBW, and yeah I just use gas to push it through.

I do replace my beer lines yearly also tho.

[Kyle Richards]

DO you use PVC lines or the more ridged polyurethane ones?

I am getting a bad taste in my PVC lines, could be cause they are dirty or because they are PVC, or both!