oops...beer in gas line

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bredmakr
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oops...beer in gas line

Post by bredmakr »

I recently noticed that I have traces of beer in my gas line. While it doesn't look like much I have no idea if any beer made its way into my CO2 tank. What do I need to do to address this situation? Do I bleed off the remaining CO2 and clean the tank? Or, is this something that I should have serviced by my local gas supply store? What about putting an inline filter between the CO2 tank and keg?
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Mesa Maltworks
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Check Valves & Filters for CO2

Post by Mesa Maltworks »

I had a reply posted on this topic earlier, but it scrolled off the forum.

1) To prevent this from happening, get a stop cock for your gas regulator. They screw in where the hose barb is on your regulator now. This will prevent the backflow of beer into the cylinder.

You should ALWAYS filter your CO2. This is because cylinder suppliers rarely clean the inside of the cylinders... they just keep filling them. Also, some CO2 is produced via fermentation of corn and/or rice which can lead to off flavors when injected into the beer. (DMS is most common) Use a .2 micron in-line gas filter that can be obtained from St. Pats www.stpats.com. It's the same filter they use to filter aquarium pump air for oxgenation of wort.

As far as your present situation, I'd clean the line and get another cylinder of CO2 until you get the filter to use with your present cylinder. Then always use the filter from here on out.
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