Storing your CFC

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SourHopHead

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I am looking at getting a new chiller and leaning towards a CFC from my homemade IC. Living in the desert water conservation is becoming a bigger thing now and so is garage space. I read a lot about cleaning using PBW and sanitizing with starsan, but how do you guys store your CFC? I did a search and found some people keeping PBW and/or Starsan in it during storage or rolling it around and storing it empty. What works best for you?

Thx
 
I used to store it with starsan in it and put the plastic tubing caps on both ends.

I read on this board that you should dry it out.

Now I flush it good with a garden hose and nozzle, then I blow it out with compressed air. I leave the end caps off so the ID of the tubing will dry out.

I re-circ hot wort at 20 min left in boil to kill anything that accumulated inside the tubing.
 
The only thing to consider with compressed air is that usually there's oil in it from the compressor.
 
The only thing to consider with compressed air is that usually there's oil in it from the compressor.

That is only if you have an inline oiler. i manually oil my tools as i dont use them that often or for extended periods of time. therefore, my air is oilless :)
 
That is only if you have an inline oiler. i manually oil my tools as i dont use them that often or for extended periods of time. therefore, my air is oilless :)

You may want to check that. You pay big bucks for a truly "oil-less" compressor. Just because your compressor doesn't put out gobs of oil, it doesn't mean it's not putting out oil. Put a filter on your airline and see what comes out and you'll change your mind.
 
Well my process is to rinse it out with hot water when I'm done with it, set it so that I can let the siphon pull most of the water out after I unhook it from the sink.

I store it hanging up in my beeratorium.

Since I now drain through my CFC through a hose into my basement from the kettle on the back porch I set up all my lines while the mash is going and pump sanitizer (with autosiphon) through all the lines up into the kettle. I close it off in the basement (with a ball-valve) and go upstairs and close off the kettle ball-valve, empty sanitizer out of the kettle and let the star-san sit in the CFC and all the tubing for the 60 minute boil.

When I'm done with the boil I simply turn on the kettle ball-valve (nothing runs yet) go downstairs and open the ball-valve and let the Star-San flow back into my storage bucket until I see the beer coming (the water is on to the CFC at this point) I then let it flow into a throw-away bucket until I'm getting mostly beer (wastes maybe 6 oz of beer) and then put it into the fermenter (Some Star-san is still mixed in, but it's not going to hurt the beer).

That actually took a lot longer to type than it takes to do...
 

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