How To Give Kegs A Deep Clean

[Darren]

Hilarious... :lol:

Its just been something ive always done basically since i started kegging. i think my reason was because its almost always impossible to get it to fully dry out so one day i decided to leave my iodophor solution in the keg (around 500ml), purge with CO2, give a shake and store. i left it for a few weeks before kegging and found the iodophor was still amber in colur compared to the other kegs that usually go clear within a week.

My thought was, if the iodopor is still viable under a blanket of CO2, i might as well keep it in there. this has now rolled on to my star san process once i ran out of iodophor. So far.. 20~ brews that have been kegged. None have been hit with post fermenation staling, poor aging and or infection.

Until this happens, i cant see myself changing my process. *Fingers crossed*.

with the rate i brew these days, the kegs stay 'wet' for around 2-3 weeks before they are filled at most.

I would suggest that leaving sanitiser in a keg for extended times is bad practice. Sanitisers work in the most by causing oxidation to contaminating microbes. Overtime sanitisers WILL cause corrosion to stainless steel.

Better to leave them dry and sanitise before use.

cheers

Darren

 

[Fourstar]

Overtime sanitisers WILL cause corrosion to stainless steel.

hmm, looks like i mgiht clean from now on and leave them open to the elements to air dry then seal, purge with CO2 and leave the PRV open so the keg breathes and doesnt go stale. ( i store inside so there shoudlnt be any contaminants getting in). when i know im going to keg within the week i might give a wet soak when convenient.

cheers

 

[Gout]

I am glad i followed your advice and stripped down the kegs (only one so far) as its very yucky in the posts etc. I will give it a good clean then sani it and its back in to service - cheers

 

[Fourstar]

Yeah.. its alot better than your beer passing by all that gunk on the way to your glass.... not to mention infecting the rest of your beer!

 

[BungalowBill]

Hi , I have gone through this topic but does not answer my question. I have 7 empty kegs , I have 2 brews to keg, so today I rinsed them out with hot water and mixed about 3 litres of keg cleaner, poured it into one keg, made a little fly over connection and ran it through from one keg to the next, giving a swirl in between. I tipped that out and put clean hot water in the first keg and repeated the process. Getting down to the question , I have some liquid sanitiser, Phosphoric Acid, which I sprayed into the kegs and seals and lids, the directions say to "drip dry" , does it have to be dry, dry orcan it be a little wet? I would like to seal up the kegs so that they will be ready for the next batch in a fornight without me going through the whole process and maybe a quick spray around the top, fill, seal and burp.

 

[Zwickel]

Hello BungalowBill,

dont worry about the cleaning process too much. You dont need em to sanitize as far as youve cleaned them well enough.

Since 9 years already Im doing the same process with all of my kegs, actually I have 18 kegs in circulation and never had any issue.

My way to do it: after a keg gets empty, Im rinsing it a little bit with hot water, just to get rid of the slurry.
Then fill in about 5 to 8 litres of hot water, add a little bit caustic soda, close the lid, shake it, pressurize it by compressed air and stand it upside down over night.
Next day drain off the caustic solution through the outlet post, rinse it with a little bit water and fill in 5 litres of water with a little bit citric acid, just to remove the remaining caustic layer on the surface of the metal. Drain it and keep it upside down standing on a dry and clean place until needed again.
Thats all.

Cheers :icon_cheers: