Cleaning Counterflow Chiller?

[sicktght311]

Those of you with Stainless Steel counterflow chillers........

Whats your cleaning regimen? How often, what do you do to clean them, do you even clean them?

I deep clean my boil kettle with PBW/Oxiclean every 2 or 3 brews with a full hot circulation soak, then clean water soak, then rinse. In between those deep cleans i'll typically fill the boil kettle with a few gallons of hot water, scrub, and circulate through the pump and CFC, and then pump that gray water out through the CFC to waste. Then i'll fill again with a few gallons of hot water, and pump directly from the boil kettle through the pump, through the CFC, and directly out to waste so as to effectively rinse everything with clean water. Then i remove any remaining water from the CFC and pump with a shop vac, spray some starsan into the inlet while the shop vac is sucking through the outlet to spread some starsan inside, and then i'll shut everything down and let it air dry.

Never noticed any nasties growing, or anything pumping through on brew day when i pump through the CFC and recirculate back into the boil kettle, plus its also boiling wort which should effectively kill anything that could be there.

Am i making anyone cringe? Or is what i'm doing fairly reasonable lol FYI i've never had an infection in the many years of my brewing

 

[eric19312]

I'm following more or less the CIP plan outlined by Spike on their Trio system. See pages 27 and 28 of this document:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0152/1071/files/Spike_Trio_User_Guide.pdf?v=1626303452

While I am boiling I scoop the grain out of the mash tun and then fill with water and PBW (about 6 gallons). I heat this up while the boil finishes. In meantime I add some rinse water to my HLT and start heating that up.
After boil is done and I've transferred from kettle to fermentor I rinse the trub pile out of the kettle.
Then I pump the now very hot PBW solution from the mash tun through the CFC to the boil kettle. Then I clean the boil kettle and drain it to a bucket. While kettle is draining I rinse the mash tun with the hot water from the HLT. Then once boil kettle is drained I pump the rinse water from the MLT through the CFC to the boil kettle. Drain boil kettle to a bucket, dump last bits of rinse water out of various tanks and I'm done.

 

[rnorman57]

I just circulate hot (180 ish) water through cfc after brewing, then blow 100 psi air through it to dry it out.

 

[Wayne1]

Water does not clean by itself. It does not sanitze quickly. You would need to run 180 F water through a CFC for at least 20 minutes to sanitize.

Far more effective to circulate 140 F PBW through the CFC, rinse with water and store.
Then circulate Star San or SaniClean through it prior to knock out on brew day. I do this for every brew.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

I do not own a CFC, but my buddy does. Once he's done with it on brew day and cleans out his kettle. He fills it half full(10 gallon kettle) of 180F water and PBW and circulates it through for a half hour. Then runs Star San through it and puts it all away. He also recirculates for the last five minutes of the boil to make sure it's ready to rock.

 

[BrewMan13]

Mine is copper, not ss, but my routine is: every 4 or 5 batches, I run a full pot (~7 gallons) of hot PBW solution through it at the end of brewday. In between, I do a quickie clean by running some kind of BLC through. Additionally, I always run startsan through it immediately before doing the actual wort transfer. I've had the thing for over a decade using this routine with no issues, so I guess it works well enough.

 

[Tom R]

After every batch I heat 160F PBW in the BK, and pump it through the CFC for 15 minutes.
Then rinse with four gallons of 160F water in a single pass.