Make a Home Brew Keg Line Cleaner

One of the least fun things about owning a home kegging system is
cleaning the beer lines. This can be difficult without a keg line cleaner, and it can be tempting to skip doing it altogether. But then beer sits around in the lines, and can be an excellent breeding ground for bacteria and yeasts. Not only will these ruin the taste of your brew but they can also make you sick. Keg lines should be cleaned every few weeks – more often if the lines aren’t used regularly. This can be a real hassle if you don’t have a spare keg or a keg line cleaner.

There are other instructions around for making a keg line cleaner from a
compact pressure sprayer, and I’ve tried those in the past. I had great difficulty sourcing the right sized pipe connectors, and when I did get it working I found the capacity was too small for my long keg lines. It was also awkward to use and unwieldy. So I set about building a keg line cleaner that would be cheap, convenient to use and extremely simple to build.

Step 1: Materials

To make this keg line cleaner, you’ll need two pieces of equipment – a pressure sprayer with a hose, and a carbonation cap. The pressure sprayer was bought from my local hardware store for AUD$9, and the carbonation cap was AUD$15 from eBay. There are no tools required for this at all. The carbonation cap used here is designed for ball lock keg fittings. Unfortunately I’m not sure that carbonation caps with pin lock fittings are available – I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. Keep in mind when you’re shopping for sprayers that it’s important that you buy one with the same size diameter hose as the barb on the carbonation cap!

Step 2: Construction

Start by unscrewing the plastic hose lock ring from the spraying wand. Then simply pull the hose off the wand connector.

Step 3:

Now if you measured correctly the hose barb on the carbonation cap should be the perfect size for the hose, so just slip the hose onto the hose barb.

Step 4: Finished!

And there you have it! Just fill it up with line cleaner, pump it up, plug the carbonation cap disconnect into your beer tap liquid disconnect and open the tap! Give the cleaner an hour or two to work, then flush with clean water. Clean your keg lines the easy way!