exactly. slow and steady.
Commercial level Cleaning Chemicals
- Thread starter toffle
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Helo friends!
I had a conversation few days ago with a professional brewer we had a agreement I will like your opinion
He clames that cleaning kegs without steam (sterilization) it's sure will infect beer what's your opinion?
I had a conversation few days ago with a professional brewer we had a agreement I will like your opinion
He clames that cleaning kegs without steam (sterilization) it's sure will infect beer what's your opinion?
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I've never had an infected keg after 40 years and I've dumped on top of the previous batch many times just rinsing
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Rinse with tap hot water run through liquid post.
Fill with hot PBW and let soak.
Push to next keg with Co2 through liquid post.
Rinse with tap hot water run through liquid post.
Fill with sanitizer
Push sanitizer to next keg with Co2 through liquid post.
Leave cleaned, sanitized, purged keg with pressure until next batch is ready.
Haven't taken the posts apart to clean for years.
Never had an issue
Fill with hot PBW and let soak.
Push to next keg with Co2 through liquid post.
Rinse with tap hot water run through liquid post.
Fill with sanitizer
Push sanitizer to next keg with Co2 through liquid post.
Leave cleaned, sanitized, purged keg with pressure until next batch is ready.
Haven't taken the posts apart to clean for years.
Never had an issue
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I did that for a while until it bit me in the butt. It turns out star San is a great sanitizer but a shįt cleaner. I had a strong porter go sour on me. It took a while, but I lost about a gallon of porter.
IPBW to the rescue. It works really well in the hotter range of temps.
Last time out I ran hot water first, then hot water + pbw then dump and wash out. The fermenter was spotless and odorless after the CIP ball.
you dont need steam to clean properly. most of the smaller commercial keg washers pump hot strong caustic after the keg has been blown down with Air to and as much of the beer is out of there.
most cycles are
1--air blow(pushes CO2 and beer out)
2--rinse with clean room temp water
3-- air blow water out
4-- pump hot (>140f) Caustic ( can be PBW, but caustic is far more effective.
5-- blow
6-- rinse with street water
7-- blow
8-- spin sanitizer(leave in, generally a low foam like PAA)
9-- blow CO2(to push out sani)
10-- pressurize with CO2(i generally want atleast 10psi on the keg, but no more then 13 psi as my tank pressure is generally about 15 psi and i dont want the keg to back feed into the tank)
steam is not needed, but it isnt terrible. if you are using steam, you have to handle the whole process a little differently i would assume. steam would probably also speed up the whole process and is surely what larger scale production breweries are using these days. think breweries that are atleast regional with automated keg filler/washing machines.
most cycles are
1--air blow(pushes CO2 and beer out)
2--rinse with clean room temp water
3-- air blow water out
4-- pump hot (>140f) Caustic ( can be PBW, but caustic is far more effective.
5-- blow
6-- rinse with street water
7-- blow
8-- spin sanitizer(leave in, generally a low foam like PAA)
9-- blow CO2(to push out sani)
10-- pressurize with CO2(i generally want atleast 10psi on the keg, but no more then 13 psi as my tank pressure is generally about 15 psi and i dont want the keg to back feed into the tank)
steam is not needed, but it isnt terrible. if you are using steam, you have to handle the whole process a little differently i would assume. steam would probably also speed up the whole process and is surely what larger scale production breweries are using these days. think breweries that are atleast regional with automated keg filler/washing machines.
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Theanks for your reply
I don't have any washing machine for kegs now, I will buy eventually but not for now..
I have small spray ball (spin balls) I Wil use them for cleaning kegs in the beginning until I buy one aumatic machine
But how I will clean spears? Any suggestions?
My chemicals will be professional high efficiency (according to local seller here)
is wise to just use the coupler of Keg fill and blow chemical the Keg via coupler?
I don't have any washing machine for kegs now, I will buy eventually but not for now..
I have small spray ball (spin balls) I Wil use them for cleaning kegs in the beginning until I buy one aumatic machine
But how I will clean spears? Any suggestions?
My chemicals will be professional high efficiency (according to local seller here)
is wise to just use the coupler of Keg fill and blow chemical the Keg via coupler?
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That's incredible
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Just realized what you mean "liquid post" you mean the beer outlet from coupler right?
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Correct
I would think that if you push cleaning solution in, and or out through the keg spear it will clean it, but I have no experience with that kind of keg
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I like the rinse with fresh beer approach
i have sent out a whole lot of kegs in my career using essentially the procedure above. no infections from the clean kegs. obviously kegs have issues sometimes, but not infections.
you can build youself a simple keg washer.
build a frame that holds 4 or 5 kegs. a small pumps, 2 or 3 brinks to hold chemical and water. using ball valves and a switch for the pump you can manually run the above cycle. tap the kegs upside down and follow the instructions.
very simple honestly. set a 20 second timer for your each run and you can clean 20 kegs an hour.
do some googling on a homemade keg washer
you could easily build one with some simple automation and timers if you had the fucks and the budget. or a raspberry pie and some electrical/pnuematic valves.
you can build youself a simple keg washer.
build a frame that holds 4 or 5 kegs. a small pumps, 2 or 3 brinks to hold chemical and water. using ball valves and a switch for the pump you can manually run the above cycle. tap the kegs upside down and follow the instructions.
very simple honestly. set a 20 second timer for your each run and you can clean 20 kegs an hour.
do some googling on a homemade keg washer
you could easily build one with some simple automation and timers if you had the fucks and the budget. or a raspberry pie and some electrical/pnuematic valves.
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That's easy to do,
But what about spears?
you are not disassembling the keg. push liquid through the center of the spear and then drain it out the gas side of the keg coupler. you want to be sure you purge the o2 out of the keg and leave pressure on it...atleast 10psi. everything after the first caustic rinse is using Co2
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Oh I understand now.
That's seems to easy..
So make all cycles with the coupler on and Keg upside down..
Using this one
fortunately I have a dosen of those already
I can build it manually to clean 5-10 kegs at time
Later on I can easy build it automatic using arduino
Good to know, Theanks!
Thought that is to hard to clean kegs, I had 0 research about this
ya that would work, just be concious that you need enough pump pressure and chemical volume to blow it hard into the keg to clean it. the size of a 10 head would be pretty significant. most of our automated ones are 2 or 3 head washers, they run a sub 5 min cycle per 2 kegs. for space savings, i wouldnt do more then 4 maybe 5, depending on your batch sizes and kegs per pallet you want to size it so you can easily fit them onto a pallet. for our 15.5g kegs you can fit 8 kegs per standard us pallet. so a double stacked pallet would hold 16 total kegs which is 8bbls of beer.
