Single Tier AG brewers please share your cleaning process

I brewed my first AG over the weekend and realized that my clean up post brew was not satisfactory. Can anyone share their cleaning method for grain removal and cleaning of the Mash Tun? For those that use false bottoms do you always remove it when cleaning? I'm doing another cleanup tonight in preparation for my second AG this week and would love some feedback.

Flananuts

I clean in place and remove all grain, debris, water with my shopvac. Yes, I do remove the false bottom because it's inevitable to get some grain beneath it. If I were smart, I would have had a bottom drain put on the mashtun then I'd be confident I could get most of it to drain out on its own.

I vac out the spent grain and go dump that on my compost pile. Then I scrub out the tun with some BKF on a 3m pad, rinse a bit, vac that water out. Rinse, vac. Same with the kettle. I vac out that last 1/2 cup of water from the HLT too to keep mold at bay between brew days.

During chilling, I redirect the first 10 gallons of chiller water into the HLT and pump that water to whatever vessel I need rinsing.

I carry the mash tun behind the house and dump the grains in a pile. I then take a hose and rinse out the mash tun. The kettle I hose out afterwards as well.
edit- might not be feasible depending on tun size

I live in an apartment and can't just dump out the grains from my huge MLT, and don't have access to a shopvac. What I do is use a scoop to remove all the grains from the MLT into a more maneuverable container (usually my 4 gallon pot), then dump that container into a garbage bag. Once I've done that, I can clean out the excess grains that I couldn't scoop out using my kitchen sink.

weirdboy said:

I live in an apartment and can't just dump out the grains from my huge MLT, and don't have access to a shopvac. What I do is use a scoop to remove all the grains from the MLT into a more maneuverable container (usually my 4 gallon pot), then dump that container into a garbage bag. Once I've done that, I can clean out the excess grains that I couldn't scoop out using my kitchen sink.

Click to expand...

all grain in an apartment? you are my hero.

I assume the single tier in question uses converted kegs but I may be wrong. If I'm right, there's no way he's carrying a keg full of grain anywhere.

good point!

I've found that my shop vac was too small to handle all that grain and liquid in one shot so it turned out to be more work then it should be. I use a Chinese strainer with the bamboo handle and dig out all the grain into a pail and dump in garden. Then I used to carry the tun and dump the liquid. Last batch I used a cheap (under $10) hand pump from harbor freight to pump the liquid out.


At this point I have tried several methods to clean and have not found anything that I like. I do save the chiller water into the HLT and run Oxyclean through the system but I still wind up spending way too much time on the clean process.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4182R8K37GL._SS500_.jpg

Thanks for the updates. Definitely helpful. I will certainly use BKF on cleaning the tun, then go about my oxyclean and five star sanitize. Yes my kettles are kegs and would be a huge PITA. Bobby, did you have to mod your shop vac or use a specific filter over the motor when doing the grain? I failed to add that i destroyed the power assembly using the shop vac. Grain was in every opening inside the system. It's fermenting on it's own in my trash can as we speak. Shop vac is replacing the unit even though I told them it was user error. Now that is customer service!!!

What I'd recommend is using the wet style filter which is just spun nylon or foam or something just to keep crap out of the motor. However, I did see a bunch of embedded grain in the thing after trying it for the first time. You know that little plastic baffle inside that half blocks the opening where the hose connects on the inside? It needs to be bigger. I got by a couple times by duct taping a piece of cardboard there but I want to screw in a piece of scrap plastic to be permanent. When the grain comes flying in, you want it to hit that wall and fall to the bottom, not get sucked into the wet filter.

Mine is a 2 tier... MLT drains by gravity to BK... but.

I clean the MLT while I am boiling. Simple rinse and dry, then I spray it lightly with StarSan to keep critters from making a home.

My BK gets pulled off, the hops and junk removed and a quick rinse. I then replace the BK, fill with an Oxi solution and set my PID to 150F and let it soak hot.

Drain.

My HERMS coil and pump are "cleaned" by pumping all of my hot sparge water through them to the MLT when I sparge.

I just dump my grains out on my concrete patio next to the grass. Once they're cool, I just rake them into the yard making sure not to leave any clumps that will stink up the place. I remove the FB, spray out the tun and wiping it down with a green scrubby. I turn them over and let it drain any excess water. As long as there's no grain stuck to the MLT and you've sprayed out the sticky wort, it's clean enough. No need to clean/sanitize any further. Once every several brews I'll get a little BKF after the BK to keep it pretty, but it's not really necessary.

I run hot water through my pump/hoses to get any wort out, then I remove the hoses, let the pump drain, and I'm good to go.

When I took my motor apart on my wet/dry vac there was at least 2 qts of grain starting it's own colony. I just realized after going on the ship vac site that my vac did not include the parts for the wet pumping feature nor the wet filter. I'm going to call today to see if I can get those replaced too by shop vac. Kegs bkf'd last night and now soaking in oxyclean here's to basement brewing tmorrow night.

Matt