Cleaning a Therminator

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Dave258

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Bought a used therminator from someone here, he said it had been shelved for a year.
I can't seem to get the thing totaly cleaned out. It is driving me crazy.
First I boiled it for a half hour, then ran hot water through the backflush hose to get out anything that came loose. Yesterday I cycled 10 gallons of hot PBW through it for at least a half hour followed by a 20 minute rinse with hot water and a star san rinse after.
There is still stuff coming out of it. I am trying to get it ready for a brewday on Monday.
What's the best way to get all the stuff that has been sitting in it for a year out? And then how do I know that it is completely clean?
Thanks
Dave
 
Bake in oven on high temperature, cleaning cycle if you have it. You will most likely discolor it but everything inside will turn to ash and flush out.
 
Thanks.
I am assuming that once I get this year old stuff out, and start using this regularly, running hot PBW through it and rinsing with hot water right after brewing will be sufficient. No need to bake it everytime, is there?
 
That's with regular cleaning. This crude has been sitting in it for a year.
 
It isn't that it has sat for a year. It is that too much hop material & trub got past the filtering or more than likely no FB or hop bag was used. I spent 4 hours trying to clean mine after the FB came loose and let leaf hops into mine, baking it was the only thing that finally got it free and clear. As long as you stop the stuff from getting in you should not have to bake it.
 
I'm guessing that if you don't have an oven, but do have a gas grill, you could just cook it on full-tilt for a while. That's my plan for my next brewing session; I'm going to toss my plate chiller on the grill and heat up to 700 or so for a while, and let cool. Then I'm going to rinse it out with water or maybe oxiclean, and then bake in the oven @ 350 for an hour.
 
if you have a pump,run pbw through it for a few hours with warm water.

sanitize same way with 5 star or boiling water for 20 min or so...(thats what i do between long brewing breaks)
 
When I brew, I heat up my remaining sparge water (always have a couple extra gallons) to around 180 and mix in Saniclean and run it through the Therminator and my tubing with no cooling. After that, I drain it and discard the first pint or so of the finished wort before I start filling the fermenter. That makes sure there's no bugs in it as my hot wort is cooled.

After all is said and done on brewday, as part of cleanup I rinse the Therminator of any wort left inside with plain old water and then once again sanitize it with Saniclean, drain well and cap it off so that it won't grow any fuglies inside in between brewing sessions.

At work we have a fiber optic microscope and once I took in the Therminator and looked deep inside it. No crud, no etching, clean as a whistle.

As for heating the Therminator in the oven, I've heard that you can do that, but not to take it over 350 dF and only heat soak it for an hour. That high a temp would certainly sterilize it very nicely without risking any damage.

I would ask Blichmann what they thought just to be sure.
 
I like to use the leftover water from chilling to flush both the inlet and outlet. I found that the initial burst of water pressure is the most effective in flushing it out. So push water through the outlet, drain the water, and repeat on the other side. Doing this a dozen times or so should flush the majority of debris out. I'd suggest using whole hops rather than pellet hops unless there is some way you can strain them. I have a false bottom in my boil kettle and hop debris still get through. A hop back doubles as an additional filter pre-chiller. I do like the idea of putting it in the oven on the cleaning cycle. I might have to try that. Also, the boiling water is a effective and cost efficient way of sanitizing it before using it.
 
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