Cleaning cornie beer line and tap

[Kev888]

Hi all,

I moved into cornies recently and am finding the process of keeping nasties from my beer line and tap a step backwards in convenience, so I'm looking for a quick and easy way to do this.

I thought the easiest thing would be to have a cornie of star san on hand to just squirt through the line when convenient. But many people on here (though not all?) seem to feel cleaning rather than just sanitising is needed. So that would mean a cornie of line cleaner solution, and also and another of water to squirt through afterwards to rinse the line cleaner out.

It'd be a bit costly to take up two cornies this way, but could be worth it in the long run; I like them but there's too much faffing around in the way i'm using them and I'm going off cornies as a result. So, does this seem the best way to go about it, or are there better ways to make tap/line cleaning a quick and easy process?

Many thanks,
Kev

[Kev888]

Have edited out much of the waffle from my original post and clarified my question - see above. Any takers now?

Cheers
kev

[boingy]

There is a bit of a discussion here:

www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=20392

Unsurprisingly, beer line cleaner is the best stuff for the job. Get it at wholesalers or ebay. Unfortunately you do have to buy it by the gallon but it will last forever.
I bodged an adapter to allow me to push water through the lines from the kitchen tap. I have evolved an easy way of getting the beer line cleaner into the lines without messing with pumps or dedicating a special container. I make up a jug of cleaning solution then back syphon it through the lines, starting at the serving tap. This requires the cornie end of the line to be below the serving tap. If you start with the lines full of water you don' need to suck on the pipes. Once the cleaning fluid is coming out of the cornie end I shut off the flow and leave it to soak for 15 minutes, then I flush it out with loads of clean water. It's easier to do than to explain!

[Kev888]

Thanks Boingy, thats really very helpful. Think my search technique could use improving - i'd not found that one!

Seems the best choices are either cornies as i was thinking, or bottles of one kind or another used as diy cornie substitutes, or your adaptor idea. All better than my "wait til the cornie is empty, fill it with cleaner/steriliser, lift it onto the counter and then syphon some out through the beer line for 10 mins before repeating all again with water" approach

The cornies look simplest/easiest to set up, but i'm also very tempted by your adaptor idea - may take a bit longer to get together initially but should then be just as easy to use and would mean i could do something with a pump and bucket(s) instead of occupying valuable cornies and using up gas each time. Or even have some containers up on a shelf and use gravity if the cleaner is thin enough.

Thanks again, for yet another in a long line of useful replies!

Cheers
kev

[boingy]

There is no doubt that putting the cleaning solution in a cornie and pushing it through the lines with gas pressure is a very easy way to do it but you do need to have an empty cornie available and also you cannot store the cleaning solution in the cornie because it will damage stainless steel given enough time, so you end up having to empty and rinse the cornie afterwards. Too faffy for me!

Beer line cleaner is heavily diluted before use and the cleaning solution is as thin as water so gravity feeding the solution into the pipes will work well. At one point I was upending the serving tap and using a funnel to pour in the solution. As long as you get the solution in there and give it time to work (10 to 20 minutes) it will work just fine. It does need a good rinse though.

[Kev888]

Great - sold then. I didn't realise stainless would be degraded, so added to the cost of extra cornies thats now looking less like what I'm after. Plastic containers feeding by gravity sounds the way to go for me!! I like simple but effective solutions..

So, yet another project on the list now

Cheers
kev

[Hawkinspm]

I just clean mine when I clean a corny anyway, push washing soda solution into the beer lines, soak, then rinse and finally I also Videne as well, then rinse that out.

To push it through I have a pump for a fitball attached to an inpost with an inch of 3/8" pipe - I can then pump in enough pressure without having to connect up to the gas.

[Kev888]

I just clean mine when I clean a corny anyway, push washing soda solution into the beer lines, soak, then rinse and finally I also Videne as well, then rinse that out.
To push it through I have a pump for a fitball attached to an inpost with an inch of 3/8" pipe - I can then pump in enough pressure without having to connect up to the gas.

Thats interesting - sort of half way between what i do now and what i was looking at.

But I think for me personally its not quite what i'm looking for; i find the cornie always finishes at an inconvenient time for cleaning it there and then, so too often I end up just swapping the line to the next (full) keg without any cleaning. I obviously deal with the keg the following day or something, but by then the tap & line have nice new beer in them and I don't really want to waste it.. Stinginess probably

Cheers
Kev

[Hawkinspm]

But I think for me personally its not quite what i'm looking for; i find the cornie always finishes at an inconvenient time for cleaning it there and then, so too often I end up just swapping the line to the next (full) keg without any cleaning. I obviously deal with the keg the following day or something, but by then the tap & line have nice new beer in them and I don't really want to waste it.. Stinginess probably

Cheers
Kev

I know that feeling - my pipes certainly don't get cleaned at the end of every keg.

[mbt22]

I bought a cheap plant pressure sprayer from B&Q (http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.jsp?a ... =266993504) and screwed a cornie beer out post to the nozzle. Pushing water through to clear the line takes a couple of minutes. I keep meaning to buy some beer line cleaner, right tool for the job and all that, but at the minute a warm washing soak, rinsed with water, then iodophor once every few weeks seem to keep them clean.

Matt

[Aleman]

I bought a Carbonater Cap from hop and grape . . . Little bit of work with some wet and dry round the very top and it fits both Grey and Black disconnects . . . PET bottle with BLC . . . pressurise . . . then connect the black disconnect . . . . open tap fill line with cleaner close tap . . . rinse with water . . . then with Videne/peracetic

[Kev888]

I bought a Carbonater Cap from hop and grape . . . Little bit of work with some wet and dry round the very top and it fits both Grey and Black disconnects . . . PET bottle with BLC . . . pressurise . . . then connect the black disconnect . . . . open tap fill line with cleaner close tap . . . rinse with water . . . then with Videne/peracetic

Thats interesting. I'd seen these on a different thread and thought they seemed potential for the BLC, but assumed you'd need a bigger capacity for all the rinsing. Can you rinse properly with something this size too or would that need a separate/different system?

Cheers
kev

[Aleman]

2 L PET Bottle holds more than enough to rinse beer lines . . . Even 6 feet of 3/16 isn't going to hold all that much . . . . and 3 feet of 3/8 doesn't have too much capacity.

[Kev888]

2 L PET Bottle holds more than enough to rinse beer lines . . . Even 6 feet of 3/16 isn't going to hold all that much . . . . and 3 feet of 3/8 doesn't have too much capacity.

Thanks - thats good to know. In a real-ale pub recently I saw a barmaid being instructed on flushing out a beer engine type line, and she was told to draw at least 16 pints of water through after the cleaner - but I'd not considered shorter lines would take less - or maybe it was just the barman having a laugh at her 'initiation'

Thanks again,
Kev

[Aleman]

Beer engine would be completely different, I'd want to pull a couple of gallons through to be safe.