Homebrew Beer Blog

Once a year I force myself to pull the brewery apart and clean it. I try to normally keep things clean, but still like to do a deep clean every once in a while. This is a good chance to kill anything that might have found a home somewhere, and also to go through all the equipment and replace anything that needs replacing. It's also good to check the regular cleaning regiments. I usually do this around now when it's too cold to brew and cabin fever sets in.

So, in this fun process, I take off all the fittings and connectors, basically everything except the kettles. The MLT needs a good work over, but I'll save that for a brew day. I also pull the pump apart, take off all the barbs on the hoses, remove all the teflon tap. I also grab the aeration stone and stainless racking cane in the fermenter area. I put the racking cane and my copper wort chiller return in the oven at 350 for an hour. Everything else got the works. I soaked everything in hot caustic for 30 minutes, rinse, then give a quick scrub. That takes care of the organics. Then I soak in hot phosphoric-nitric acid for 30 minutes. From there, it goes right into a bucket of brewery cleaner (like PBW). Then I scrub again and rinse. That takes care of the beer stone.

I had the pressure canner out to sterilize some yeast and starter containers, and I wanted to sterilize my hoses too. I use silicone hoses, and they get stained after a while. No matter what I do, I can't get them white again, so I'm guessing they're just stained and not beer stone. Still, I want to hit it with heat to kill anything that might be in there. So, since I had the pressure canner out, I tossed everything in there too. Needless to say, everything is really clean!

This is one of the great things about stainless, is you can be aggressive in cleaning.

Not too many surprises. My pump head was the biggest. A couple hop leaves were in there, and a good coating of beer stone. Some left over wort too. I'll have to think about how I'm cleaning this thing. Usually I flush it with a Star-San recirc as I clean up for 15-20 minutes. I'd think that would flush it well, but I guess not. I may have to start doing cleaner, which would be a bit of a pain. I should also do an acid clean and/or pull it apart a little more often. I'm not too worried about sanitation though... I recirc the mash for 60+ minutes, then run the sparge water through it for 30 or so, then I recirc boiling wort for 15. I think it's pretty sanitary by chilling time, but still, it's nice to have stuff clean.

I also took the time to rewire the pump. The plug was coming apart a little, and I think the plugs were getting corroded or something since it took a little effort to get it to plug/unplug. So, I wired up a new plug and it's good to go again. Also, I'm going to order a bunch of hex nipples to replace all my regular nipples. The hex ones are really nice and much easier to tighten/pull apart. Also, I've got some more tri-clovers coming in from Martin/Swagman. I think I'm going to put clamps on the pump end of the lines, which might make cleaning and storage a little easier. A little too frequently I've been getting pinhole leaks at the hose barb because of storage. Here, I'll be able to quickly take the hoses apart and let them hang dry. I'm also going to get a clamp for my water filter, and fill directly into my kettles, rather than dumping buckets. I really dread filling and lugging buckets, so this should make setup a little easier. Anyway.. the annual big brewery cleaning is history for '08.

Dirty Pump Head:

Caustic Soup!

All Clean!