Beer Line Cleaning

A recent UK government SMART award has helped fund a ground-breaking project at 42 Technology Limited – work which could soon see landlords, hoteliers and club managers enjoying significant time and cost savings associated with the tedious task of cleaning beer dispense lines. More importantly to the brewer and drinker, the innovative method aspires to guarantee a sparkling delivery from barrel to glass.

The process is based upon Ice technology originally pioneered at Bristol University. Working in close association with Brewing Research International, 42 Technology developed a process which will enable beer dispense systems to be cleaned every time a barrel or keg is changed; using nothing more than a fine slurry of ice which scours the components as it is pumped through. No cleaning fluids, no special solutions, just ice!

It is widely known that the nature of many draught beers causes microbiological action in the beer dispense lines – cask beer, for example, is after all a ‘living’ product.

Although modern kegs ensure their contents remain in a high quality, sterile condition; the final journey to the glass can be a very unhygienic path through couplers, joints, lines, fob detectors and eventually taps. All of which provide a perfect environment for the cultivation of yeast and bacterial colonies, with the unmistakable result of foul tasting, contaminated beer with a tainted aroma and poor appearance.

To make matters even worse, deposits known as ‘beer stone’, a calcium deposit that builds up over many months, also act as a haven for the biological constituents. After just one treatment with the ice slurry, a substantial amount of beer stone is removed. Giving a clear indication that the ice slurry can be effective at both removing and preventing build-up of beer stone in dispense line systems.

Lengthy trials of 42 Technology’s new ice process have shown that slugs of ice pumped through entire beer dispense systems will remove build-ups of microbiological organisms that are unaffected by existing cleaning methods.

Traditional cleaning, involving regular use of powerful chemicals is known to kill most of the contamination, but does not typically remove the denatured organisms from the line – leaving behind a foothold for the next generation of biofilm. Such chemical systems have a number of disadvantages which in practice means that beer lines are cleaned poorly or far too infrequently. In addition to being extremely unfriendly to the environment, the hazards of using these chemicals are often underestimated. Many end-users are failing to observe or simply unaware of the strict safety guidelines. Unfortunately, it is very rare to find them using protective gloves, goggles or face masks that are deemed vital, by Health and Safety regulations, when dealing with these extremely corrosive chemicals.

The application of ice technology, in its ideal embodiment, could be an integrated cleaning system which runs automatically, with little intervention from the landlord. The ice slurry itself has to be produced from a liquid with a freezing point suppressant; this enables the suspension of ice crystals giving the required flow characteristics. Fortunately, alcohol is an ideal freezing point suppressant, making it is highly suitable to use as the working fluid to make the ice slurry. This opens the possibility that it might not be necessary to flush the system at all! Such an approach may have the potential to almost completely eliminate beer loss and labour required to clean lines.