What taints your lines?

[Woolsocks]

I know that once a line is used for root beer, you can't use it for anything else because you'll never scrub away that root beer flavor.

What about other sodas? Ginger ale?

Beer containing fruit extract?

Beer containing actual fruit?

We have a bunch of new lines and a new jockey box and I want them to stay tasty.

[mr.jay]

Beer containing ACTUAL fruit, if cleaned properly, should NOT taint your lines.

.....Let me rephrase that. All of beers containing actual fruit that I have made did not seem to taint my lines once cleaned properly.

[MatthewS]

Blueberry Ale?!

It seems I use need at least several days soak of penetrate to get the blueberry flavor out of my lines.

Added a step of an acid wash and it seemed to get rid of the taint fully

[BrewerTL]

Our Pumpkin Ale is real b!tch to get out of our lines. The spice takes SEVERAL acid cleanings and soaks to get out.

TL

[Sauce]

We once left a line with a pepper beer (bung keg dry peppered with various types of peppers) filled with it without flushing in between line cleanings (2 week interval).

Well, any beer in that line that didnt have a beer pulled through it regularly had a "pepper essense" to it.

Took a 24 hour caustic soak and a 12 hour acid soak to finally rid the line of the flavor.

As for Fruit, we have brewed a raspberry ale since we opened (1998) and those lines DEFINATELY give any beer flowing through them a raspberry flavor. Needless to say they are dedicated to fruit beers now. We brew a cherry beer once a year to mix things up and it bascally thasts like a cherry/Raspberry beer, especially if its the 1st pull in the last hour or more.

[Jephro]

Citric acid & Poly Vinyl lines mix too well

We did a peach lambic at a previous brewery using real peaches we pitted and juiced. 400 lbs of peaches, that was a long day. Anyway, nothing would get the peach flavor out of the lines. We tried every combination of acid, caustic, baking soda, hot water and soaking each one for a day to weeks at a time. Every time we thought we had it licked, we left water in the line overnight and tasted it the next day and found we had peach flavored water. We even thought we could get away with serving our Raspberry Wheat in that line but same story as the water, any time the beer sat in the lines for any period of time we had peach raspberry wheat on the first pull.

Jeff

[MJMurphy]

In previous years our Raspberry Hefeweizen would taint the lines, leading us to install a dedicated (read sacrificial) line. In recent years, however, we have used only straight fruit, an aseptic raspberry puree, to flavor the beer and have successfully kept it from lingering with regular line cleaning.

Often coloring agents and flavor concentrates can be the real sticky point.

[Woolsocks]

Sounds to me like the consensus is:

Spices are bad but won't completely wreck your line forever
Fruit extract is very bad -- must dedicate the line
Real fruit is OK, but line will require a good cleaning before the next beer goes in

Am I right?

[Jephro]

As i stated in my previous post, we never got the peach flavor out and that was from real peaches. I would suggest running from a keg cooler on your back bar. That way you only have to replace a few feet of line and no glycol to mess with.

Jeff Byrne

PS maybe i should follow that up.. the type of fruit may play a role in the lingering flavor. any thoughts??

[beauxman]

I agree with the backbar plan. Put a small tower over a cooler and run some line. You change beers, change the line. 6-7 feet of 3/16 line is nothing. This is what I am going to do with my new project. 8-10 lines on the python and a small tower over a cooler with 2 taps to run the funny stuff.

[BigWilley]

I guess i will be the one to disagree. With my barrier lines i have never had a problem getting the "pumpkin Spice" or extract fruit" flavors out with the usual line cleaning regimine. Never did rootbeer though i imagine big problems. I use Beer Line Cleaner from "?" The guy that sells it used to work for Coors and i believe New Belgium uses it now.