I agree. It was daunting at first, now I can do it in 5 minutes.
I did pick up a CIPball, I don’t remember where I got it. It may have been SS.
I pretty much gave up using it. In order to get any decent spray it requires more flow than a typical brew pump. I have a sump pump style pump for my keg washer which is powerful enough. However after using it a couple times and realizing I needed to take the tri-clovers apart because they would never get hit by any kind of spray. The actual wiping of the inside of the conical is easy and only takes a couple minutes. For me it’s not worth hooking up the CIP system because it only nocks off a couple minutes of what I would need to do.
Another thing to note is that if you have the cooling coil in, it will block a lot of the spray pressure from getting to the conical above and around it.
My experience exactly. Though I do get good performance with the CIP fed from a 17 gpm sump pump, even with the cooling coil in place. But the time to set up and getting everything going has proven to be about the same as the time to accomplish a hot water spray down and rinse followed by a fill and PBW soak to loosen krausen.
The difference is when I CIP, the job of cleaning is done in :30 minutes, excluding the removal and cleaning of all the TC valves and accessories. With the rinse and soak process, the soak can last a couple hours or even overnight. And I still have to disassemble and clean all the TC accessories. Of course I save a lot of water and PBW if I CIP, bit then also have more hoses and fittings (and pump) to rinse and dry.
So to recap, my experience with CIP on a 7 gallon system saves overall cleaning duration but not necessarily the actual "hands-on" cleaning time. CIP requires more "moving parts" (pump, hoses), but uses a lot less water and PBW. I'm satisfied with the overall cleaning performance, but you still have to do much disassembly just like you do with manual scrubbing. CIP is probably overkill for a smaller system, though I'm not sorry I bought the system, even if I don't use it all the time.
In the end, the differences between the two cleaning methods is "a wash." Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Brooo Brother