One thing we never covered in our kegorator series was how to clean your beer lines. After a while you vinyl beer lines will get coated in beer stone. Beer stone is a deposit of calcium oxalates and various dextrins and sugars. If left in the lines too long it can cause excess foam issues regardless of how well balanced your gas is or how clean your glassware is. Worse case is that dirty beer lines will change the flavor of your beer. Giving it stale or sherry like notes. Never good. Here’s how I deal with cleaning out my beer lines.

My first step is to make a good gallon of cleanser. I have found PBW to work great. However there are other products available specifically for cleaning beer lines. Cleverly enough that product is called…Beer Line Cleaner.
Next I remove the black beverage quick connectors from the ends of the beer lines. Being careful to not let the beer drip out. Having screw on ferrel type connections makes this chore a bit easier. I will eventually change all my lines to this type of connection.
The reason for not letting the beer drip outcomes next. I put the open ends of the lines in the pitcher of cleanser, placed above the height of the faucets. This allows for natural siphoning of the cleanser through the lines and faucets. Once you have completely pushed through the beer with cleanser you simple let the product sit per the manufacturers instructions.
Five star chemicals recommends 20-30 minutes of contact time for routine cleaning.
After the cleaning is done I like to run some sanitizer through the lines as a rinse but also to kill any microbes that might have snuck in there during cleaning.
Hook it all back up and you are good to go. Expect some foaming at first if you start pouring right away. This is natural due to the warming of the lines and faucets.

Next time you can’t seem to control foaming; or are I wondering why your newest beer tasted great from the hydrometer but is awful in draft be sure to clean those beer lines!

Cheers and happy pouring.