How To Clean Beer Lines: Top Tips

Cleaning your beer lines might just be the single most important thing to do when running your pub, bar or restaurant. Cleaning them properly is essential. If your beer tastes bad, it's highly unlikely your customer will come back and even worse, may pass this on to other potential customers who now could steer clear. Breweries are also committed to removing their products from accounts that do not look after the quality.

You might be new to this, or you might just need to double-check you're doing it right, but either way, check out some tips below on cleaning your beer lines and assume this is your first time:

Tip #1 - Disconnect the beer and attach it to your cleaning ringmain

Disconnect your keg couplers from the beer and attach it to the right cleaning socket on your cellar board. Fill your cleaning bottle with water, turn off all your secondary valves to the keg lines and gas pumps. Turn on your secondary valve controlling your cleaning gas pump and then bleed all your fob detectors until they're filled with water

Tip #2 - Pour water through the tap first

Sometimes, accounts add cleaning fluid and water straight into the cleaning bottle and draw cleaning detergent straight through the lines. You should first only add water, pull this through to the tap and then add your cleaning fluid. Oh yeah, once you add your cleaning fluid, remember that for every 10 litres of water, you'll ned 100ml of cleaning fluid. Ensure you bleed the detergent through your fob detector as well - yeast gets trapped in the top of the fob.

Tip #3 - Count the number of pints you throw away per beer tap

The very first time you clean your lines, and connect the cleaning up, count how many pints of beer come through the tap before the water draws through. It's always important to know the value of your waste when running a pub. Once you know how many pints of beer you throw away per line, you can look at other methods to try and re-coup those loses.

Tip #4 - You Must Do 3x cleaning cycles

Many a time I ask someone at a pub how they clean their lines, and the one part that always surprises me is that they only do one cleaning cycle, potentially and unknowingly damaging their reputation and quality of their beer. ALWAYS do 3 cleaning cycles. When I say this, I mean, once you pour your cleaning fluid out of the tap, shut the tap for a minimum of 10 minutes, then pour off another pint of cleaning fluid and then let line the detergent sit in the line for another 10 minutes (remember minimum 10 mins). This is done 3 times, so a minimum, cleaning fluid will be resting in your lines for 30 minutes.

Tip #5 - Pour through at least 5 pints of water

After your third and final cleaning cycle, you will want to run fresh water through your lines before reconnecting your beer. Ensure you rinse out your cleaning bottle, removing any residue of cleaning detergent, and fill with water. Some accounts like to keep two cleaning bottles, one for water only and for detergent only. Pour at least 5 pints of clean water through the lines, ensuring all residual of cleaning fluid has been removed from the lines

Tip #6 - Pour your beer back through to the tap

Turn off your cleaning gas pump, reconnect all your couplers to the beer kegs, bleed your fob detectors and make sure you pull the beer through - at least half to 1 pint, ensuring all residue of water has gone, which also prevents water freezing in your cooler coils. You have now successfully completed your weekly beer line clean.

Tip #7 - Don't swap your cleaning detergent too frequently

I know it's nice to experiment and find the best detergents, but consistency is key with specs and beer tastes. Find one you like and keep to the same brand. Three Nations recommends our products on our cleaning page

Oh, one more thing...

A lot of newbies to cleaning lines should use purple-coloured cleaning detergent so they can be certain when the fluid is in and fully removed from the lines or not... we recommend Our Purple Cleaning Fluid, you can check it out on our shop page. If you need support from a proffesional, book a visit from our trained technicians here.