The Crucial Benefits of Beer Line Cleaning and Maintenance
Maintaining clean beer lines is crucial to the success of any restaurant, bar, or brewery.
Customers come in looking for flavorful, fresh beer. Neglecting your lines can result in skunky, mineral-filled pours that damage your business’s reputation and bottom line.
Regular beer line cleaning, done the right way, keeps your beer crisp and clean — and your customers coming back for more.
The Benefits of Regular Beer Line Cleaning
1. Better Tasting Beer
The biggest reason to clean your lines is to keep your customers happy. Regular cleaning ensures they get the freshest, most flavorful beer possible.
Over time, beer lines develop a buildup of yeast, bacteria, and minerals like beer stone. If left to linger in your draft system, these contaminants can sour the taste of your beer. Off-flavors like these can turn even your most die-hard regulars away.
Using glycol and installing glycol systems can also help keep your beer colder if you have a long draw, ensuring the crispest taste possible.
2. Your Draft System Lives Longer
Between kegs, faucets, keg couplers, ball locks, and lines, your draft system is quite the investment — so you need to protect it.
Regular, professional maintenance using a high-quality beer line cleaning solution prolongs the life of your equipment by eliminating corrosive buildup and ensuring smooth operation. Acid cleaning and alkaline solutions keep your stainless steel parts, such as shanks, faucets, and ball lifters, in top condition, reducing the need for more expensive maintenance later.
3. Better Health and Safety
Regularly cleaning keg lines keeps things safe and sanitary.
Neglecting proper cleaning can result in serious health hazards. Bacteria, mold, and yeast thrive in dirty beer lines. This not only turns customers away due to off-tastes but can also lead to illness in unsanitary conditions.
Regular cleaning with caustic cleaning solutions and sanitizers isn’t just for your benefit — it’s for the safety of your patrons. Plus, it’s required by the state.
How Often Should You Be Cleaning Keg Lines?
To keep your beer keg lines clean and free of buildup, you should clean them every 10 to 14 days.
This ensures that your beer taps provide the smoothest pours — and helps keep you in compliance with state regulations.
Different states may have varying regulations on how often you’re required to clean your lines. Most, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, follow the Brewers Association’s guidelines, which state it should be done at least once every two weeks.
For regular bi-weekly cleanings, alkaline solutions are sufficient. Every three months, you should also perform an acid cleaning to remove beer stone and mineral deposits.
How Do You Clean Draft Beer Lines?
Some homebrewers clean their own craft beer systems using DIY beer line cleaning kits. For a DIY beer line cleaning, you have to follow these steps:
1. Disassemble the Draft System
First, disconnect the keg coupler from the keg and remove all parts, such as the faucet, washer, and shank. These components should be scrubbed separately with a cleaning brush. You’ll also need to disconnect the regulator to check for any built-up residue.
2. Mix the Cleaning Solution
Be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions carefully when mixing your solution. Cleaning solutions are often caustic or alkaline-based, which are great at breaking down organic material like yeast and bacteria but they can also be dangerous to handle.
3. Flush Your System
Using a cleaning pump, push the solution through the beer line. Let the solution sit in the line for 15 minutes to break down any contaminants. You can use a cleaning bottle or a hand pump to move the solution through the line, but it’s more efficient to use an electric recirculating pump.
4. Rinse the Line
After the solution has sat, flush the line with clean water. Be sure to rinse thoroughly to ensure no caustic solution remains, as it could ruin your craft beer.
5. Sanitize
Once the system is rinsed, apply a food-grade sanitizer to the line to ensure all contamination is removed and prevent yeast and bacteria from growing back too quickly.
6. Reassembly
Once you’ve cleaned and sanitized everything, reassemble the draft beer faucet, keg coupler, regulator, and the rest of the components. Reconnect the keg and test the system by running a small amount of beer through it.
Hiring a Professional Beer Line Cleaner
The DIY approach to beer line cleaning may work for some homebrewers, but it isn’t the best option for busy restaurants, bars, or breweries. If you have multiple lines, especially long-draw lines, there are significant benefits to hiring a professional cleaning service like Bubble Tech.
1. Time Efficiency
Running a restaurant or brewery is a time-intensive business. Cleaning each beer line yourself every two weeks takes up valuable labor hours and pulls staff away from other critical operations.
We have the right equipment and expertise to complete cleaning jobs quickly, minimizing downtime and reducing extra labor.
2. Quality Cleaning
We’re trained to follow strict cleaning protocols that ensure your entire draft system is cleaned and sanitized properly. This means consistent results and premium flavors every single time.
3. Specialized Tools
We use recirculating pumps and beer line cleaner (BLC) machines that provide a deeper, more thorough clean than DIY kits or handpumps can. These tools ensure that all contaminants in your system are completely washed away, keeping you in compliance with state regulations.
Deep Cleaning, Clear Flavor
Regular beer line cleanings are essential for maintaining the cool, crisp flavors your customers love. Clean lines not only keep customers coming back, but they also extend the life of your draft system and ensure your business stays compliant with regulations.
While DIY cleaning is an option, it’s neither efficient nor thorough enough for busy restaurants or bars. Hiring professional services guarantees your lines stay spotless and your system runs at peak performance.