How Often to Clean Kegerator Lines?

Most people love going out to the nearest pub after a long day at work. Meet a couple of coworkers, friends, or families to unwind, catch up and/or celebrate over a few beers and more. Imagine doing the exact same thing, but in the comfort of your own home.

Now, you can conveniently relax and prepare your own draft beer with a kegerator at home. 

Basically, a kegerator is a beer dispenser. It keeps a keg refrigerated and uses pressurized CO2 to dispense the keg. This allows the contents to remain fresh for an extended period of time.

This great addition to your home bar is an excellent appliance to share with your guests and loved ones without the hassle of crowded bars. The keg was built solely for the purpose of dispensing beer. Having your own kegerator extends the life of your beer up to 6 months, allowing you to purchase and dispense beer in large quantities.

Additionally, it helps free some space from your refrigerator, while still giving you access to your very own draft beer anytime you want.

How Often to Clean Kegerator Lines?

Extending the shelf-life of your keg with the use of a kegerator is a no brainer. In turn, you will have an almost endless supply of cold draft beer, with its appealing aroma and distinct flavor.

Note that the consistent overall aroma, taste and quality of your beer also depends on the maintenance and frequent cleaning of your kegerator. In order to keep the consistency of your beer, you have to keep your beer lines clean.

Now that you have your own, you may have questions regarding the maintenance and cleaning of your kegerator lines.

You must understand that, like any other appliances, your kegerator lines must be cleaned regularly. This is to ensure that your beer is always in good quality with a longer shelf-life.

Maintaining the cleanliness of your kegerator not only ensures the quality of your beer, it also prevents germs from contaminating your drink that may cause sickness.

Clean your kegerator lines often and you will be able to enjoy your own draft beer more. Here is a breakdown on how often you should clean kegerator lines:

• Clean your beer lines regularly - at least once a month to prevent germs from building up
• You also want to clean your kegerator lines in between each new keg to ensure proper beer flow
• For commercial environments, line cleaning should be performed at least every two weeks or thrice a month
• At a minimum, a once-every-six-weeks line cleaning should suffice if you do not really use it often
• Clean your draft beer lines with a caustic cleaning agent twice a month and with an acid for a much thorough cleaning every three months

Why Do Lines Have to Be Cleaned?

Beer lines have to be clean for numerous reasons. Just like any other beverage equipment that serves drink, it is necessary to maintain its cleanliness to continuously serve fresh drinks.

Basically, the quality and flavor of your draft beer will be affected the most when you have neglected to clean your kegerator lines. Here is a more in-depth list of why kegerator lines have to be cleaned:

• To maintain a sanitary environment
• To ensure that your keg’s shelf-life is extended and not shortened because of contamination
• To ensure bacteria will not be able to contaminate your beer, affecting its flavor, aroma and appearance
• To prevent the buildup of limescale, yeast, mold and bacteria
• To eliminate the buildup of mineral deposits called beer stones or calcium oxalate, which may flake off into your beer. This affects its flavor as well

How Do You Clean The Beer Lines?

Now that you understand the importance of cleaning, you can now actually start doing so to maintain the freshness of your beer. There are multiple and various methods you can do to clean your beer lines.

This includes the use of cleaning kits to help you clean your kegerator lines faster and easier. There are two methods you can use to clean your draft beer dispensing system.

The first is the use of a pressurized cleaning kit where it pumps a mixture of water and cleaning chemical into the beer line. Let it then soak for the time prescribed on the kit’s manual and rinse it afterwards. This is not a complicated cleaning system and you can use a standard beer line cleaning kit from Kegco or Edgestar, which uses an easy hand pump.

The second is the use of a re-circulating cleaning pump, where a motorized electric pump cleans the system with the use of a turbulent flow of the cleaning solution. This is more effective than simply soaking the cleaning solution inside the beer lines.

No matter what cleaning kit you use, this three-step guide for cleaning your kegerator lines will help you maintain its sanitation:

• Flush the beer from the lines with water
• Clean the lines with appropriate chemical solutions
• Soak the faucet and keg coupling clean
• Thoroughly rinse the chemical from the lines, faucet and keg coupling with water

Drinking beer is fun, especially when shared with your favorite people.

And what more fun when you have your very own home kegerator. Keep in mind though that you always have to regularly clean it to ensure the best quality beer at your disposal.

Clean it between each keg and you will be sure to enjoy your very own draft beer within the comfort of your home.

Cheers.