Sanitizing lines

John C

South Jersey FC Member
Now that I have gone to kegging, I am finding it impossible to dry my lines, some of which are long (6ft?). Since these can be used to transfer kegged beer into bottles (ie put up some stock) I am concerned about contamination to the bottled beer. The lines either have fittings or are too long to run brushes through. Any ideas?
 
Fill a spare keg with starsan and run it through the lines. Works best if you run PBW through first, then rinse, then starsan. I'd then pull a good pint off to waste before filling bottles.
YMMV
 
Fill a spare keg with starsan and run it through the lines. Works best if you run PBW through first, then rinse, then starsan. I'd then pull a good pint off to waste before filling bottles.
YMMV

Just what I would have said. I keep 5 - 7 gallons of both Oxyclean solution (poor mans PBW) and Star San and reuse them multiple times. The cleaner is a judgement call on how long you can use it but the Star San is good for use as long as it is <3.0 PH. I gravity fill the keg with cleaner first using my transfer hoses and leave solution in hose and keg for about an hour. Then I pour the solution back into storage and gravity fill the keg and lines with Star San. Finally I pump out the Star San with CO2 and I am left with sanitized lines and a sanitized and O2 purged keg ready for filling.
 
I usually run StarSan through any tubing I'm cleaning after use (siphon, counterpressure filler, etc.) and then let them drip-dry before storage.

If you're talking about your serving lines in your kegerator, I clean my lines after every keg (using either BLC or Five Star's line cleaner), rinse with hot water, and then tap the next keg. If the line is going to be unused for a period of time I run StarSan through them after cleaning, and then open the faucet and push it out with CO2.
 
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