How To Clean Your Beer Lines – Keep Your Homebrew Fresh

Are you a homebrewer or do you own a Kegerator? If so, then you know how important it is to keep your beer lines clean.

Clean beer lines ensure that your beer tastes fresh and delicious every time and won’t make you sick (part from consuming too much of it!). In this article, we’ll discuss the basics of beer line cleaning and provide tips on how to get the job done quickly and effectively.

Why You Should Clean Your Beer Lines

The main reason to clean your draft beer lines is to keep your beer tasting great. Beer lines can become dirty and contaminated with bacteria over time, which can give your beer taste sour or off-flavor and possibly even affect how long your kegged beer lasts. They can also build up beer stone.

Beer stone is a hard, calcium-based deposit that can form on brewing equipment, such as beer lines. It is caused by a buildup of minerals, specifically calcium oxalate, which is a byproduct of the fermentation process. Beer stone is nothing to worry about when it comes to safety of flavour, but it can cause problems with the equipment, making it harder to clean and potentially affecting the taste of the beer if not removed. 

Cleaning the tap lines regularly will also reduce the likelihood that bacteria that could grow in them, keeping your beer tasting fresh and delicious.

Cleaning beer lines also helps to prevent clogs, which can cause issues with your draft system. If the lines become clogged, it will reduce the amount of beer that is dispensed and could damage other parts of the system.

Regular cleaning will help keep everything running smoothly and ensure that you always have a perfect pour every time.

How Often Should You Clean Beer Lines

When it comes to cleaning beer lines, frequency matters. Beer lines should be cleaned at regular intervals in order to ensure the taste and quality of your homebrewed beer is impeccable. 

The general rule of thumb for a light user is that you should clean your beer lines every 2-4 weeks or ideally each time you change kegs.

It’s critical to keep up with regular maintenance and cleaning in order to ensure you have no off flavours and no nasty bacteria making their way into your delicious beer. 

Now let’s look at how exactly we go about cleaning our beer lines.

How To Clean Your Beer Lines

So what’s the best way to clean beer lines? It all starts with a good beer line cleaner.

There are many cleaning chemicals that can clean your lines, but our favourite is PBW. 

Using PBW

PBW is a simple and easy-to-use cleaning solution that can be used to quickly break down beer residues and bacteria.

The Cleaning Process for using PBW:

1. simply dissolve the powder in clean hot water (as per package instructions) in one of your empty kegs
2. connect up the gas to the keg and activate the tap
3. Run the cleaning mixture through the line for a minute or so then turn off the tap and let it sit for approximately 15 minutes
4. Re-engage the tap after letting it sit for another minute.
5. Do this for each of your kegerator taps
6. Rinse out the keg and re-fill with hot, clean water
7. Run the clean water through the beer lines to rinse them out and remove all the PBW mixture
8. Your beer lines are now clean