I'm an experienced mead maker with a couple of Micro-Matic Sanke D kegs I bought online over the pandemic. I finally got around to using one, and I'm stuck on the last part of the teardown: removing the CO2 valve from the down tube. I've watched a few YouTube videos and they don't really go into huge detail on this part. I even broke down and called Micro-Matic who basically said that this stuff wasn't designed to be regularly disassembled but instead pressure-cleaned with an expensive keg washer. I'm hoping someone out there has a clever tool or approach they use to handle this situation, even if it's something silly like "I hold it down over this widget with a bump which pushes up the ball and then I spray cleaner down the tube and follow it up with rinse water and I'm not dead yet".
Help?
Micromatic is correct its fairly unusual to tear down the keg spear. My recommendation is to clean it as it was designed to be cleaned with a pump.
Basically you would need a basin for what ever you want to run through the keg (rinse, caustic, sani, etc) to feed the pump. Connect the pump’s outlet to the liquid port on the coupler. Connect a hose to the co2 line to flow back into the basin (remember to remove the co2 check valve). Couple the coupler onto the keg and invert the keg (ie turn upside down). Then run the pump.
Whatever solution should pass through the spear spray the walls of the keg then drain out through the co2 pathways in the spear. This effectively is what a keg washer is doing and will pretty thoroughly clean the part you are concerned about.
A couple of safety tips: wear eye protection and make sure you purge co2 out of the keg prior to adding caustics
Good luck!
Thank you for the detailed response! I’ve never looked that closely at couplers, but some quick browsing shows that the gas lines are attached with fittings that look to be removable, so that should provide access to the check valve. I’m cleaning carboys (and the spear-less keg) with a pump that has the carboy rest inverted over a tube with a CIP spray attachment. It sounds like I should be able to use the same setup to wash the keg without removing the spear, once I get hold of a coupler.