[Village Taphouse]

Check it out:  At my old place the fridges were in my basement and the beer line ran out of the top of the draft fridges, through some insulated tubing and to the faucet.  Where I am now, the fridges are in the garage with the same setup and I am noticing that the first beer I tap in a session has a weird off-flavor and I suspect that it's the couple ounces of beer in the beer line and my garage is getting warm this time of year (it was 100° here today).  One solution would just be to run off a couple ounces of beer and toss it prior to filling the glass but I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this.  I actually thought that I had a "mutated yeast slurry" issue but this seems to be isolated because glass #2 and beyond are fine.  Cheers and thanks. 

[MNWayne]

How about trying a beer line with an oxygen barrier?

[BrewBama]

It makes sense that the beer in the line is heated and damaged. I believe those with kegerators that have a tower use a fan to force cold air into the tower cavity. Maybe you could set up something similar with PVC pipe.

[Bel Air Brewing]

It makes sense that the beer in the line is heated and damaged. I believe those with kegerators that have a tower use a fan to force cold air into the tower cavity. Maybe you could set up something similar with PVC pipe.

They have forced air kits available for purchase to do just this.

We have several beer keg coolers, all with tower cooling. But I still dump the first 2 ounces or so, as beer that sits in the lines (especially over night) does not taste as good as the beer straight from the keg.

And I cannot tell you how many bars we have been in where we were served beer that was sour. Either from sitting in the lines, or from dirty taps.

[Village Taphouse]

Clearly this was not an issue when everything was in my cool basement or here over the winter with my garage being plenty cool.  FTR, I am using the rigid, hard plastic beer line (BevFlex Ultra or something?), not the softer and thicker stuff.  I have no issue just running an ounce or two out of the line when it's warm here.  I just started noticing this flavor in the past week with temps starting to rise.  It was 100° here yesterday and approaching that again today.  I will look into the cooled PVC and see how easy it would be to introduce to my system.  I think there is 12" or less of line between the keg and the shank.