mjw210
Active Member
I've had a 4 tap kegerator that i built for the past few months now. For about 2 months everything was perfect, but recently I've noticed an off flavor in some of the beers. I've heard of vinyl off flavors from lines, but this is a medicinal like flavor almost, stings your nose a bit. At first I thought it was acedylhyde since it showed up immediately when I tapped my black IPA (3rd beer on that tap), but it didn't taste cidery enough and using a picnic tap to go straight out of the keg I've isolated the problem to the beer lines. This problem is making the black IPA undrinkable, and I've started to notice it in our newly tapped IIPA (both tapped around the same time, 3rd beer through the tap for the IIPA)
We normally rinse the lines out and star San them before retapping with a new beer. I haven't done a full cleaning yet, but since this is impacting two taps I decided to completely clean out the lines. Ran hot water > recirculated BLC for a few minutes > let stand for 10 min > recirculated BLC for a few minutes > let stand for 10 min > ran hot water. I did this on all 4 taps.
Tried the beer again today and that flavor is still there. The odd thing is that it's barely noticeable on the IIPA and very strong Black IPA (both 3rd beers through the lines) but non-existent in the cappuccino and skeeter pee that we have on the other two taps (both 2nd beers through the lines). We're using 10 ft of whatever beer lines Midwest sells as the standard liquid out lines.
I'm at a loss on what to do now. How do I remove this flavor? Any thoughts?
We normally rinse the lines out and star San them before retapping with a new beer. I haven't done a full cleaning yet, but since this is impacting two taps I decided to completely clean out the lines. Ran hot water > recirculated BLC for a few minutes > let stand for 10 min > recirculated BLC for a few minutes > let stand for 10 min > ran hot water. I did this on all 4 taps.
Tried the beer again today and that flavor is still there. The odd thing is that it's barely noticeable on the IIPA and very strong Black IPA (both 3rd beers through the lines) but non-existent in the cappuccino and skeeter pee that we have on the other two taps (both 2nd beers through the lines). We're using 10 ft of whatever beer lines Midwest sells as the standard liquid out lines.
I'm at a loss on what to do now. How do I remove this flavor? Any thoughts?