Cleaning technique: SS Brewtech Chronical w/ chiller attached?

[razorblaydesjr]

Hey guys, we brewed a 22ish gallon batch a few weeks ago and transferred into two of our brand new 14ga SS Brewtech BME Chronicals. They are beautiful indeed! But after the end of fermentation and transferring into our kegs... the cleanup was a royal pain with the chiller attached!

Can anyone give your technique/process for cleaning with a chiller attached? We decided to clean in place and not remove the chiller. We did not have leg extensions and they were sitting on the concrete slab. This made draining very slow and somewhat difficult. Just any tips or advice is much appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Aaron Beers]

Hey guys, we brewed a 22ish gallon batch a few weeks ago and transferred into two of our brand new 14ga SS Brewtech BME Chronicals. They are beautiful indeed! But after the end of fermentation and transferring into our kegs... the cleanup was a royal pain with the chiller attached!

Can anyone give your technique/process for cleaning with a chiller attached? We decided to clean in place and not remove the chiller. We did not have leg extensions and they were sitting on the concrete slab. This made draining very slow and somewhat difficult. Just any tips or advice is much appreciated.

Thanks.

Not sure what you mean by "chiller attached". Do you mean you leave the side mounted chilling coil mounted inside the conical?

I've found it very useful to have the conical raised about 2 to 3 feet off the ground. I don't have extension legs so I built a small stand out of wood for it to sit on. Raising it off the ground allows you to use gravity to drain liquid out of the dump/racking valves and into a bucket (for clean-in-place).

To clean the BME chronical, I:

- take off the lid and wipe off any krausen that stuck to it
- wipe down the sides of the conical/top of the chilling coil where the krausen sat (as it's the most stubborn stuff to come off)
- open the dump valve and run some water through the conical to clear out any significant amount of yeast/sediment on the bottom of the conical
- put the lid back on with the clean-in-place ball attched to the 4" TC port
- prepare about 6 gallons of hot water in a bucket using a bucket heater
- add between 1/2 and 1 cup of PBW to the bucket once the waters hot enough
- run a line from the dump valve to the bucket, and a second line from the racking valve to the bucket
- attach the outlet of a submerisible pump to the inlet of the clean-in-place ball/lid
- put the submersible pump in the bucket and turn it on
- let the pump run for 10 minutes or so
- run clean water through the clean-in-place ball to wash off PBW residue


Similarly, when sanitizing before filling, I have a bucket filled with starsan solution, attach the clean-in-place ball, attach pump to clean-in-place ball, run tubes from dump/rack valves back to the bucket, turn on the pump and circulate starsan solution through the conical. Having the conical a few feet off the ground allows you to use gravity to run the solution back to the bucket.

One more note, the submersible pump for the CIP cycle is pretty powerful, 2400 gallons per hour. The high pressure is useful for blasting off stuck on stuff, even on the undersides of the chilling coil. The pump I use can be found on amazon with the name "Superior Pump 1/3 HP Thermoplastic Submersible Utility Pump, 91330", 57$.

 

[razorblaydesjr]

Thank you @Aaron Beers for sharing your process. Since my post, I purchased the extension legs and CIP in preparation for something similar. Sharing your notes will help me alot on my next cleaning. Thanks again!

 

[czmkid]

Tried cleanin my unitank with a chugger pump and the cooling coils attached. Didn’t work lol.

Ended up with the same sump pump as posted here that has a ball valve attached with a 1/2 barb on top of it that is feeding the cip ball. I also found that raising mine up on a big cooler helped the tank drain back into the 5 gal bucket. I mean it is one solid stream of pwb shooting out of there! I wonder with the leg extensions if it would be high enough for the discharge to make the bucket? I worry about it being top heavy only having three legs and not four.

Anyway this will clean pretty much any crud off in no time flat. Don’t really know why the ball valve as I pretty much ran it full bore but hey it’s there if I need to dial it back. I use 2.5 gal of water but only have a7 gal tank.

 

[MichaelBD]

My stainless steel conical at home controls fermentation with an immersion coil similar to the chronical, but coolant plumbs in and out from the top/lid. I used to sanitize my fermentation vessel thoroughly with idophor, but now I only clean it once every 3-5 brews. My batch size is 20 gallons.

What I do is after the boil, I transfer boiling hot wort straight to the fermenter (or hot wort after a 10-30 whirlpool, which still stays around 80-90c). I usually leave it for about 5 minutes before allowing the coolant to be pumped in to cool the wort to the desired fermenting temperature prior to pitching my yeast.

So far I have had ZERO contamination with this procedure and find that it is simple and effective. On a side note, because it takes time for the massive 20gallons of wort to cool down to desired temps, you will have to take into account hops isomerization for your IBUs due to their longer exposure to the hot wort.

Michael

 

[Vandulus]

My stainless steel conical at home controls fermentation with an immersion coil similar to the chronical, but coolant plumbs in and out from the top/lid. I used to sanitize my fermentation vessel thoroughly with idophor, but now I only clean it once every 3-5 brews. My batch size is 20 gallons.

What I do is after the boil, I transfer boiling hot wort straight to the fermenter (or hot wort after a 10-30 whirlpool, which still stays around 80-90c). I usually leave it for about 5 minutes before allowing the coolant to be pumped in to cool the wort to the desired fermenting temperature prior to pitching my yeast.

So far I have had ZERO contamination with this procedure and find that it is simple and effective. On a side note, because it takes time for the massive 20gallons of wort to cool down to desired temps, you will have to take into account hops isomerization for your IBUs due to their longer exposure to the hot wort.

Michael

Or you could always use a hops spider/basket filter to pull the debris out when the time is up. I've found that a $30 filter basket with 400 micron mesh works great for hop pellets.

 

[tdibratt]

Not sure what you mean by "chiller attached". Do you mean you leave the side mounted chilling coil mounted inside the conical?

I've found it very useful to have the conical raised about 2 to 3 feet off the ground. I don't have extension legs so I built a small stand out of wood for it to sit on. Raising it off the ground allows you to use gravity to drain liquid out of the dump/racking valves and into a bucket (for clean-in-place).

To clean the BME chronical, I:

- take off the lid and wipe off any krausen that stuck to it
- wipe down the sides of the conical/top of the chilling coil where the krausen sat (as it's the most stubborn stuff to come off)
- open the dump valve and run some water through the conical to clear out any significant amount of yeast/sediment on the bottom of the conical
- put the lid back on with the clean-in-place ball attched to the 4" TC port
- prepare about 6 gallons of hot water in a bucket using a bucket heater
- add between 1/2 and 1 cup of PBW to the bucket once the waters hot enough
- run a line from the dump valve to the bucket, and a second line from the racking valve to the bucket
- attach the outlet of a submerisible pump to the inlet of the clean-in-place ball/lid
- put the submersible pump in the bucket and turn it on
- let the pump run for 10 minutes or so
- run clean water through the clean-in-place ball to wash off PBW residue


Similarly, when sanitizing before filling, I have a bucket filled with starsan solution, attach the clean-in-place ball, attach pump to clean-in-place ball, run tubes from dump/rack valves back to the bucket, turn on the pump and circulate starsan solution through the conical. Having the conical a few feet off the ground allows you to use gravity to run the solution back to the bucket.

One more note, the submersible pump for the CIP cycle is pretty powerful, 2400 gallons per hour. The high pressure is useful for blasting off stuck on stuff, even on the undersides of the chilling coil. The pump I use can be found on amazon with the name "Superior Pump 1/3 HP Thermoplastic Submersible Utility Pump, 91330", 57$.

I was planning on doing this same thing..My concern however is using the sump pump to run through the cleaning cycle with PBW and Hot Water and then later using the same pump to pump Starsan into the conical to sanitize. Don't we run the risk that some crud or bacteria in the pump housing could get left behind?

Thx