What to use to clean beer lines

[casbar]

Do you have to use anything special to clean beer lines from a cornie? Or can you use the stuff that is used to dissenfect your normal brewing kit.

Does beer line cleaner do something different to the normal powder such a VWP

Cheers

[arturobandini]

Some people are a bit sensitive with regards to cleaning their Cornelius Kegs with bleach solutions as "pitting" of the stainless is possible. The short contact time you're anticipating with a line clean shouldn't affect it but that isn't 100% guarantee. I've used bleach and Beer Line Cleaning solution before. Charging (adding co2)up the keg with the dilute solution and pumping it out through my chiller and back through my dispense tap. I then leave it in the lines for 30 minutes and run the whole lot out. A thorough cold water rinse of the keg, fill with cold water, then charge up the keg once more before pumping the clean cold water through the chiller and the lines to rinse them through. You know when all the cleaner is gone when you can put your hand in the cold water and not feel the slippery/soapy feeling in the water...but a full 18litre rinse should be more than sufficient.

I'm sure someone will come along and tell you stainless and bleach are the biggest no-no since time began but I've done this quite a lot now and suffered no ill effects on my kegs. I've also got no idea of Beer Line Cleaner contains the same bleachy properties (pretty technical eh?) as supermarket thin bleach but if it does every pub in the country runs it through their stainless steel chiller coils weekly.

[casbar]

Well I've just followed the process you described, put the VWP diluted into an empty cornied (which was waiting to be filled), gassed it up and ran it through the beer lines. Then rinsed cornie with clean water, and then gassed the cornie and fed the clean water through the taps. All seems ok, water was clean and tasteless when it eventually came out of the taps. So that will do until the next time