How To Clean Keg Lines For Way Better Tasting Beer
Getting kegs of beer instead of cans or bottles for a party is a fun way to celebrate all kinds of occasions — from birthdays to Super Bowls. However, the gross reason bartenders avoid ordering draft beer when they go out is that the keg lines aren't always cleaned often enough, creating an unpleasant taste in the beverage from the build-up of bacteria, mold, sediment, and yeast. Daily Meal talked to Nicholas Dukes, mixologist at Pechanga Resort Casino, to learn how to clean the keg lines so that your party guests feel confident that drinking from your kegs is safe.
"A cleaning kit can be used to flush the lines between keg changes," Dukes said. You can get a pressurized cleaning keg to make the job super easy. Just fill the cleaning keg with a beer line cleaner, available in a liquid, powder, or tablets you mix with water, such as Five Star Saniclean, Five Star PBW, and Five Star PBW Tablets. Next, connect the line so that your CO2 tank and cleaner do the work for you. Dukes explained, "Once the faucet is opened at the bar, this mixture will pump through the line flushing yeast, sediment, and any residual beer left over from the last keg."
Once clean, it's important to remove all the solution from the keg line before pumping beer through it. To do this, Duke recommends thoroughly rinsing the keg with water, allowing water to run through the open lines until all the cleaning solution has been flushed.
When to clean the keg lines and tell when beer has expired
Nicholas Dukes advises that keg lines should be cleaned between each keg, but given how many pints of beer you can get out of a single keg, it may take a while to get through it all. Luckily, a keg stays fresh for a while, even after it's tapped. Roman Maliszewski, founder of Tapster, told Daily Meal, that you have an average of about a month after you tap it before the beer goes bad. If this is surprising, Maliszewski advised, "Keep in mind that zero oxygen gets into the keg even after tapping, so it stays sealed even after we tap it."
Still, it helps to know how to tell if beer has gone bad. According to Dukes, you can tell when a keg has gone bad because the aroma will likely be sour, and the taste and carbonation will be off. Dukes recommends storing kegs "in a temperature-controlled walk-in refrigerator between 36 and 38 degrees [Fahrenheit] at all times" to extend shelf life.
Even if the beer is still fresh, you should be cleaning the keg lines. Dukes notes, "For those beers that don't move as quickly, a good rule of thumb is to remember to clean your lines at least every 3-4 weeks." If you don't clean the keg lines often enough, you should look out for off-flavors in the beer. "If you find your beer tasting metallic or like iron (think sucking on a penny), your line has gone bad," the mixologist said.