Summary: Dirty draft lines can ruin your beer’s taste and even damage your expensive equipment. This guide reveals pro tips on how to clean a draft beer system in your self-pour system.
Key Takeaways:
- Clean lines are essential for taste, health, and equipment longevity.
- Automated cleaning systems like Glanola Linemaster X are a game-changer.
- Self-pour systems demand attention to line cleanliness.
Proper draft line cleaning is essential for any commercial draft beverage system and is often neglected. Traditional line cleaning processes can be costly, tedious, and disruptive to operations. Unfortunately, inadequate cleaning of beer lines and draft system components can lead to significant consequences for your business, especially if you are operating a self-pour system. Commercial beer line cleaning doesn’t need to be a dreaded task. To facilitate a regular, thorough cleaning program, we suggest opting for a more convenient and efficient solution.
Why Clean Your Lines?
- Protect the Quality and Taste of the Beer: Yeast, mold, bacteria, and beer stone (calcium oxalate) can grow in the lines and build up over time. When fresh beer passes through contaminated lines, its flavor and aroma are compromised, resulting in tainted beer.
- Protect the Health and Safety of Your Customers: Although not life-threatening, the build-up in the lines is unsanitary. Like food service, customers expect freshness and quality in their beer.
- Protect the Performance and Lifespan of Your Investment: Draft systems are a significant investment. Poor cleaning practices can lead to additional costs for repairs and replacement parts. Self-pour technology relies on a meter to measure the ounces poured. Build-up can jam the meter, preventing accurate measurements.
When to Clean Your Lines
- Every Two Weeks: The Brewers Association recommends cleaning draft beer lines with a caustic solution every two weeks.
- Every Brand Change: Lines should be cleaned when replacing a keg with a new product to flush out any residue.
How to Clean Your Lines
Manual Cleaning
The most common process for manually cleaning commercial draft beverage systems is re-circulation cleaning, using a motorized pump to circulate the cleaning agent through the system.
Cons:
- Messy and requires the right equipment.
- Typically done by an outside service after hours.
- Hot water can cause foamy pours if not cooled properly.
- No way to verify proper cleaning.
- Build-up can be pushed from one line to the next, potentially causing damage in self-pour systems.
Automated Line Cleaning — A Better Way
With the Glanola Linemaster X draft beer line cleaning system, you can efficiently clean lines individually or in groups as often as needed in a hassle-free and non-intrusive manner, while complying with regulations. The unique, glycol-infused, color-changing detergent (purple to green) indicates the presence of bacteria, providing peace of mind.
How it Works:
- Installation: Takes 2-3 hours and requires access to power, cold water inflow and outflow lines, and a coupling system in the cooler.
- Operation: The glycol beer cleaning system uses cold water to flush the beer from the line, followed by detergent, and then another water flush. The detergent changes color to indicate cleanliness.
- Cost: The system is rented for a monthly fee, and the detergent costs about $15/month.
Pros:
- In-house: Perform and oversee the cleaning yourself.
- Quick & Easy: Takes 8-9 minutes to clean.
- Flexible: Clean one line or multiple lines simultaneously.
- No Disruption: Uses cold water, so cleaning can be done during operating hours.
- Verification: Color-changing solution verifies cleanliness.
- Cost-effective: Saves on the monthly cost of line cleaning.
“The Glanola line cleaning system is convenient, easy-to-use, and gives me confidence that our lines are actually being cleaned thoroughly. My favorite part is watching the lines turn from dirty to exceptionally clean with the color-changing rinse process.” - Maddie Schilling, Manager, First Draft Taproom MPLS.
iPourIt is the industry-leader and expert on all things self-pour and with more than 650 systems installed, we’ve learned a thing or two about draft beverage equipment. It’s key to the success of a self-pour system and it’s crucial that it’s installed and maintained properly.
→ For more information about installing a self-pour system and the three pieces that are required, contact us.
We are committed to providing solutions to help ensure that iPourIt systems are as effective and as profitable as they can be. Stay tuned for more Self-Pour Pro Tips and get handy pointers and insights to help you succeed with self-pour beverage technology.
Want to learn more about iPourIt self-pour draft technology and the benefits of Glanola’s automated line cleaning solution? Contact us at 949-270-0556 to speak with a self-pour expert.
