Monday, December 16, 2013

Easy Cleaning a Keg Line


So the ideal way for many to clean a keg line is to take an empty keg filled with cleaner and flush the lines. Step 1 is repeated with sanitizer. I meant to do this prior to filling my brand new keg with Imperial DoppelWeizen Bock but the timing didn't work out. What's a man to do? I could clean out a keg of old IPA or Black IPA in my tiny apartment but that seems a touch on the difficult side given a lack of space. Instead I am going to improvise using an old empty two liter bottle and a device I made myself. For my results read past the break!


(Please read more after the break.)
The device it simply a 1/4 inch nipple, and a 2xmale adapter. I screwed it into the line and then the bottle on the cap, with a little pressure it flushed the lines, easy peasy. 

Dirty keg lines are a fact of life, and cleaning them is a best brewing practice. You went through several hours of time and effort to get your beer from grain to here; finish strong. These are the improvised steps which I hope will help me finish getting my beer from here to the glass.

  1. Gather up the equipment and cleansers. Nothing is worse than starting a project and realizing too late that you forgot to get something.
  2. Rinse everything thoroughly. Cleaners and sanitizers can only do so much if gunk is caked on they can't really get behind it. You gotta get that off first.
  3. Use the cleaner and flush the tubes.
  4. Use the sanitizer and flush the tubes.
  5. Use beer to flush the sanitizer and discard the first glass. 
  6. Enjoy!
That's it. This last hurdle between yourself and some great brews was conquered by your own redneck engineering skills. 

No comments:

Post a Comment