best way to clean equipment to get it "like new"

i clean and sanitize each time i use my equipment but a lot of it could use a really good thourough cleaning such as the brewpot, mashtun, blow off tubes. Is there something thats really good to let it soak in for a couple days than give it a good run and rinse to try to get it looking like new?

bkov said:

i clean and sanitize each time i use my equipment but a lot of it could use a really good thourough cleaning such as the brewpot, mashtun, blow off tubes. Is there something thats really good to let it soak in for a couple days than give it a good run and rinse to try to get it looking like new?

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If your pot is stainless, a razor blade and pot scrubber will do the trick. If it's aluminum, you want the oxidized layer to stay there.

For plastic tubing, a short (1hr) soak in OxyClean Free will do the trick.

Depending on your mash tun (I assume a water cooler here?) I'd go with an OxyClean soak overnight.

Happy cleaning.

Oxyclean or PBW. Often it is near impossible to remove some stains from plastic such as your blow off tubes. The choice is to live with the stains for replace the hoses. New hoses will likely get equally stained during the initial use, so I just clean them thoroughly and don't worry about it. Use Iodophor as a sanitizer and all of the plastic it comes into contact with will have a nice evenly brown stained appearance. So long as you clean and sanitize everything well, I would not worry about some minor discoloration in the hoses etc.

A very good alkaline cleaner should remove most of the organic soil.

PBW is my choice. Lots of people here really like Oxyclean Free. Mix the powder with warm to hot water. Add the dissolved cleaner to water in the vessel you want to clean. Let it sit at least overnight. Use a 3M green scrubby on any built up deposits.

Rinse it well.

The next step is to remove inorganic soils. For that you will need an acid. Citric can work, phosphoric acid would be better. ACID 5 by Five Star is what I use. It is a blend of nitric and phosphoric acid. Fairly nasty. Use gloves and eye protection when handling. Add the acid to water. Never water to acid.

Again, let it soak over night and use a separate 3M green scrubby. Rinse well.

The combination of of the two should remove most soils from stainless steel. There isn't much you can do for PVC hose. It is fairly inexpensive. Toss it and buy some more.