Party Tap Hygiene

[Sausages]

Hi!
After a break of a few years I've recently got back into brewing. I've also moved from using bottles to kegs and have finished drinking my first corny of Wherry. I had the keg sat in a spare cupboard at ambient temperature, dispensing using a party tap with the tap remaining connected for the 7 weeks or so it took to finish. When cleaning everything out I noticed the inside of the party tap looked dirty; on removing the valve cap and lever I found some brown mould had built up around the outlet side of the white valve seat. It all cleaned out easily enough but the white valve seat has turned brown. This raises a couple of questions:

Can I use the discoloured valve parts, or could they promote the same thing happening again or otherwise spoil my beer? I tried soaking in some stellarclean PBW for an hour but didn't seem to shift it. Given the cost, I might replace the tap anyway but was curious.

What have I done wrong to cause this in the first place? In hindsight I can see that a small amount of beer would have remained in the outlet of the tap, which would have gone off and probably caused the nastiness. Could I have rinsed that out somehow? Or should I have removed the tap and line periodically and flushed through?

Thanks!

 

[Rodcx500z]

Hi, what i do when a keg is finished, i clean the keg then put my cleaner in give it a good shake then give it a blast of gas attach the line and party tap and run the cleaner through it then take the line and tap off leaving it full of cleaner, then when i fill again attach the tap run beer through it and bobs your aunty

 

[crowcrow]

After every keg I run oxy cleaner through the beer lines and generally leave over night before blasting with co2, then water until the taste is gone, then co2 again, then beer!

An over night soak seems to clear the li e up and remove any stains.

But as you say, line is cheap, I have replaced mine in the last year, as I bought a load of line when buying some malt to get over the free postage amount.

 

[hoppyscotty]

I have a cheap garden sprayer and attached a bottle ball lock post to the end of the lance so can connect the party tap and flush with PBW, let it sit for a day or so, then flush through with stars (I have two garden sprayers, one with PBW and one with Starsan). Use it for the kegs and fermenters too as well as my kegarator.

 

[DocAnna]

I store all my lines full of Starsan/Chemsan solutions, and before use and flushing out the solution also spray the disconnects and party tap outlet with the same solution. No need to flush with CO2, just connect to the keg and discard till runs true with beer. Keeping a sprayer full of sanitiser solution with a ball lock post attached makes flushing the lines after use as lot simpler.

I used SX-CS5 White / Black Pressure Sprayer 5Ltr
with one of these (cheaper suppliers are available) Plastic Ball Lock Carbonation Cap
and a small jubilee clip from screwfix.

As to using the brown stained plastic part, given the soaking involved, and more importantly given that it's at the dispense side of the line, it would be highly improbable that it would cause any problems. Any infection would need to travel all the way up the line and into the keg, which while theoretically possible, is unlikely to occur over normal timescales of use.

Anna

 

[Buffers brewery]

Liking the garden spray route . I use one of these…

…filled with chemsan. I made an adaptor….

…so I can pressurise the bottle with air from a car tyre pump so don’t need CO2.

 

[crowcrow]

Nice, I use a carbonation cap (Plastic Carbonation & Line Cleaning Cap & FermZilla Pressure Cap | The Malt Miller) I put some cleaner a in bottle, charge with gas and then connect to beer line, then repeat with just gas. The pumping method sounds good though, save my co2!

 

[Sausages]

Thanks for the replies everyone! Like the garden sprayer idea, think I could use that to periodically flush out the party tap line which should avoid anything nasty forming again. Now to decide what to brew next time!