How to Clean Your Draft Beer Line

You go to great lengths to make sure your beer is spot on. You tend to every step along the way. You are sure your yeast starters are healthy, you are even using a climate-controlled environment to ferment. You even tend to the sanitizing of your equipment. Why, then, do you sometimes skimp on the cleaning of your draft lines? Every step of the way, adds incremental points of quality, and can affect the taste of your beer, if you aren’t careful. Draft beer line cleaning in Austin TX, and elsewhere is a very simple undertaking. Here’s how you clean your draft lines.

Cleaning the Draft Lines

If you are using a long-draw system, then re-circulation cleaning is necessary. A long-draw system is a system where the keg is more than twenty feet away, and your beer must travel this distance, down the draft lines, to the faucet. Professional establishments use the re-circulation method of cleaning, where they circulate a clean solution through every draft beer line, for at least a few minutes.

However, if your draft lines are under ten feet, or if you only make beer as a hobby, then there’s a simpler method that may appeal to you. You can simply soak the lines and rinse them. Here’s how.

To start, you need no special tools. Simply get your cleaning mixture, pour it into an empty keg, use carbon dioxide to pressurize it, and now, run your cleaning solution through your draft lines the same way you would if it was beer. Run the cleaning solution through, until it comes out clear. Do this for about fifteen minutes. Now, repeat the steps again. Only this time, fill your keg with clean water, and run that through the draft lines, to rinse out the cleaning solution. You don’t have to fill your kegs up with the cleaning solution, or the clean water. You only need a few quarts.

Why Clean Your Draft Lines?

Yeast flows through the system. Your draft lines can also be a breeding ground for mold and other bacteria. Obviously, when you are serving fresh beer, you don’t want the taste affected by any old beer. Beer stones or calcium oxalate can also accumulate in your system. Beer stones are comparable to artery plaque. It nurtures the bad bacteria, and over time, can create white floating debris in your beer.

If you serve beer to yourself or others, always consider draftbeer line cleaning in Austin TX.