So I have 7 kegs in my rotation. When I clean the kegs and carboys I would prefer to do that all at once. Maybe I am lazier than average, but I will just wash out a keg or carboy with water until I have 2 or three of them and then go though the detailed process with all three or so at once.
My question is after I rinse (water) , clean (One-Step) and sanitize (Star-San) what is the best way to store the keg until I fill it again? I thought that I would fill it with 15psi of CO2 and let it sit, but I picked up a keg yesterday and there was a musty-smell so I had to clean and sanitize again, I looked at one that had the top off (it was washed out and cleaned, but not sanitized… that seemed (smelled) fine… any ideas here?
I’m a little lackadaisical about cleaning kegs to be honest. If it had good (uninfected) beer in it then I don’t make a big deal out of cleaning. Rinse the trub from the bottom, rinse with about a quart of starsan and refill or close, with that quart of starsan inside, pressurize and store until needed. If the keg is sealed and pressurized with CO2 nothing bad is going to grow in there.
I clean when I pull one out/kicked… Rinse well get the crap out of it… I toss the lid in bin with other lids… You know which one goes to which, right?
They get stored upside down… When it’s time to fill one… I rinse again… If stuff is stuck, then it’s PBW… rinse again… Then comes star san…
Sneezles61
I follow a similar routine: leave the star-san and pressurize for storage. Before I fill, I check for pressure (leaky keg?) and if all good, I give it a swirl and then use co2 to push the sani out of a picnic tap. That way it’s purged and ready to go for filling.
If I’m really lazy, the beers are similar, and the keg hasn’t been sitting around a long time, I’ll refill a used keg.
Usually I wait till I have a bunch of empties them clean them all. I have one keg full of Star San all the time. When I clean the others I push it to one of the freshly cleaned ones with CO2 and leave pressurized and empty. Doing this leaves me with a sanitized, purged keg. I continue to push from one keg to another until the Star Sam ends up in the last keg.
Wash but keep the Star-San in there for storage (which means washing right before I keg)
or
Rinse out, but keep stored open and star-san when ready (which means washing right before I keg)
Absolutely NOT. Why would you wash them after using starsan? The point of starsan is to sanitize the vessel. It should be the last thing that hits the keg before beer.
By “wash” I mean rinse out the star-san foam. It takes putting a gallon or two of water and shaking the keg 2 or 3 times to get all the foam out…
I rinse when a keg kicks, and PBW at that time If needed, then close it up. Once I’ve got a few empties, I will fill one completely with Star San seal it and use CO2 and picnic tap to move all the Star San to the next keg. Moving through the batch this way leaves them sanitized, CO2 purged, pressurized for slow leak detection, and ready to fill. At fill, I purge from the gas post and fill through the liquid post so no oxygen gets in.
When my kegs kick I leave them alone. They are full of CO2 and small amount of beer so not much can grow in them. Then when I need one go through the cleaning and sanitizing. Call me lazy but it has worked for a long time. If there is something unusual like spice in one then I might make an exception.
I bet the big breweries don’t clean kegs until needed to be filled.
I clean kegs when I’m ready to put two new kegs on tap. I leave everything hooked up to the kicked kegs until it’s time to clean. I’m fairly lazy so I open em up, give em a good rinse, then pour in about a quart of StarSan. I seal it up and slosh it all around inside, set regulator to 20 psi, let it seal up and then hook the serving lines back up and push out the StarSan through my taps. This leaves a sanitized purged keg ready for the next batch and freshly sanitized lines. I full out clean my lines about once a year. I have 6 kegs I use in rotation so I never have to refill a freshly kicked keg. I try to be considerate of my wife and dump dry hop bags on Thursday nights since trash day is Friday at our house. I love the smell of the trash can with hop bags, but she doesn’t care for the smell.
I’ve never considered myself a cheapskate by any means but I’ve never understood why people think they need to completely fill a keg or bucket with starsan in order to sanitize it…
That’s not why I do it. By completely filling with starsan, there is no air left, so once I push it out with CO2, the keg is completely filled with CO2, no oxygen. When I later depressurize from the gas post and fill through the liquid post, I avoid any air / oxygen. Is it overkill? Maybe, but it works for me.
That’s what I heard too… Don’t even dare leave 1/16th inch square for O2 to hide in…
I pop the lid when I fill my keg… Using 1/2" silicone tubing… A couple times I wrestled with the keg post getting clogged from some free range hops… And pushing the brew with CO2 into a purged keg… Not a problem…
Sneezles61
Me do wait. Untill 4 empty kegs. Than clean. Them. Wash them with. The. Power wash cleaner. Machine. Second step. I do use. Oxyclean. Powder. Let them stand for 30 min. After that. Rinse. With. Power cleaner. On keg day. Clean with. Pdw. Powder. And star. San. Sounds anal. Twice cleaning. Before kegging. But. It. Makes me feel beter.
Kegged my Vienna today…
So, while cleaning up the keg, I ran my fingers along the opening where that big O-ring seats… I felt an area where it dipped a bit… I figure, its a place that COULD allow CO2 to escape… I grabbed my handy 6" cresent wrench and proceeded to fix that area… little her… little there… now I can’t feel that bump… Took little tinkering to get the wrench to bend just a small area of the sheet metal… I know I’ve got a few more that needs an adjustment…
Sneezles61
