How Clean is Your ChillPlate?

[jaba]

The paranoia is strong in this thread. All large breweries use plate heat exchangers, the only difference being that the large ones are made with gaskets vs brazed copper on homebrew sized ones. The cleaning process is virtually the same regardless of size.
In order to properly clean any heat exchanger, you need to be able to run hot water and your cleaner of choice (PBW, in all reality, oxiclean is not a substitute here) at 1.5 times the speed you transferred your wort. This means that if you run your pump all the way open during transfer, you need a different, more powerful source to clean it. Even a garden hose hooked up to hot water with a spray nozzle is way more effective than running a pump circulation slowly.

My cleaning process is as follows:
Use hot water with a sprayer pressed against the wort ports to blow as much debris as possible out of the chiller, alternating directions. Aim the output of the chiller into a white bucket to see what is coming out.
Once you are confident that the water coming out is as clean as it can get, set up a loop with your pump and hot (at least 130 degrees) PBW and run for at least 15 minutes. After that, rinse with more hot water. If what comes out is still dirty/green/etc, soak your chiller in PBW for awhile/overnight and rinse out any remaining crud.

Taking a heat exchanger apart is not the funnest thing in the world. A smaller one may be a lot easier to do, but there will still be a high attention to detail necessary to do it right. I can see a lot of people reassembling incorrectly and ruining their beer because of it. It is very rare in a real brewery that the heat exchanger will be taken apart for this exact reason.

 

[Duda_Energy]

Taking a heat exchanger apart is not the funnest thing in the world.

This. This is precisely why we haven't released one yet. Cost aside (they would probably run 3-5 times our current unit prices, not just double), every attempt we've made at making a gasket chiller has resulted in something that never quite seals completely once you take it apart once, and we don't want to put out something we feel is sub-par. This is one of the reasons we sometimes recommend baking the unit at around 350 degrees - that temperature might not be hot enough to 'burn out' any stuck particles, but any germs/ bacteria are dead. As a comparison, hospitals wash their nurses' scrubs at 160-180 degrees to sanitize them.

And if anyone is still worried and wants to do a lye bath, we sell that pretty cheap too

 

[BeerGrylls]

This. This is precisely why we haven't released one yet. Cost aside (they would probably run 3-5 times our current unit prices, not just double), every attempt we've made at making a gasket chiller has resulted in something that never quite seals completely once you take it apart once, and we don't want to put out something we feel is sub-par. This is one of the reasons we sometimes recommend baking the unit at around 350 degrees - that temperature might not be hot enough to 'burn out' any stuck particles, but any germs/ bacteria are dead. As a comparison, hospitals wash their nurses' scrubs at 160-180 degrees to sanitize them.

And if anyone is still worried and wants to do a lye bath, we sell that pretty cheap too

I just bought some red hot devil, because my B23-30 was clogging with hop material. (big double IPAs) What's your recommendation on how to do a lye cycle?

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

This is one of the reasons we sometimes recommend baking the unit at around 350 degrees - that temperature might not be hot enough to 'burn out' any stuck particles, but any germs/ bacteria are dead. As a comparison, hospitals wash their nurses' scrubs at 160-180 degrees to sanitize them.

True that. But you also don't use nurses' scrubs to drink beer through hehehe

MC

 

[makokiller]

The paranoia is strong in this thread. All large breweries use plate heat exchangers, the only difference being that the large ones are made with gaskets vs brazed copper on homebrew sized ones. The cleaning process is virtually the same regardless of size.
In order to properly clean any heat exchanger, you need to be able to run hot water and your cleaner of choice (PBW, in all reality, oxiclean is not a substitute here) at 1.5 times the speed you transferred your wort. This means that if you run your pump all the way open during transfer, you need a different, more powerful source to clean it. Even a garden hose hooked up to hot water with a spray nozzle is way more effective than running a pump circulation slowly.

My cleaning process is as follows:
Use hot water with a sprayer pressed against the wort ports to blow as much debris as possible out of the chiller, alternating directions. Aim the output of the chiller into a white bucket to see what is coming out.
Once you are confident that the water coming out is as clean as it can get, set up a loop with your pump and hot (at least 130 degrees) PBW and run for at least 15 minutes. After that, rinse with more hot water. If what comes out is still dirty/green/etc, soak your chiller in PBW for awhile/overnight and rinse out any remaining crud.

Taking a heat exchanger apart is not the funnest thing in the world. A smaller one may be a lot easier to do, but there will still be a high attention to detail necessary to do it right. I can see a lot of people reassembling incorrectly and ruining their beer because of it. It is very rare in a real brewery that the heat exchanger will be taken apart for this exact reason.

This is pretty much what I do also. My chiller is quite large, it was used in a dairy, I send boiling water through at the end of the process for about 15 minutes to really sanitize things up.

 

[goodgodilovebeer]

I couldn't really find solid info on this. I wanted to err on the safe side.

MC

I'm a little late to this thread, but thought it may be helpful to anyone using Lye for deep cleaning...

FWIW, I asked my friend (a chemist), who recommended a first wash with 1.5% and increasing the strength if necessary.

1.5% Solution : 1g NaOH in 65ml Water
2.0% Solution : 1g NaOH in 50ml Water
2.5% Solution : 1g NaOH in 39ml Water

 

[Duda_Energy]

To expand that out to an easy calculation for us poor Americans, half a pound of lye in 4 gallons of water is ~1.48% solution

 

[augiedoggy]

I have been using my 20 plate duda chiller for over 2 years now and never had any evidence of any crude being stuck or coming out during cleaning cycles...

I simply recirculete my mash so my wort is clear going into the BK and I use a stainless hop basket along with a 30" or so long piece of stainless braided hose attacched to my BK diptube... this basically prevents any particles but the very finest from ever making it INTO the plate chiller....
never have any stuck sparge or drain issues either. I use a small 3 gallon per minute DC pump on a speed contyroller when pumping wort through (yes I recirculate boiling wort for 5 mins or longer at the end of each boil)
when cleaningI have 2 of my pumps running in tandom which dramatically increases the flow through the chiller (my flow meter shows this).

I clean all my lines, 3 inline pumps and hoses as well as rims and chiller in place with a pbw mix every couple brews depending on how long things sit without use.

(Again I have never seen any evidence of anything building up or breaking loose in my chiller.)

 

[normonster]

(Again I have never seen any evidence of anything building up or breaking loose in my chiller.)

Well if you'd just leave some sort in there and be patient you'd see plenty. [emoji51]

 

[lschiavo]

I always flushed my therminator both directions with hot water and compressed air until it ran clean. Worked for me but I did have an air compressor in my brewshop

 

[augiedoggy]

Well if you'd just leave some sort in there and be patient you'd see plenty. [emoji51]

Well for the record I have left pbw solution sit in the chiller for hours and I will then get a greenish blue tint to the water coming out from the chemical reaction between the copper and the pbw but thats it...

 

[normonster]

Well for the record I have left pbw solution sit in the chiller for hours and I will then get a greenish blue tint to the water coming out from the chemical reaction between the copper and the pbw but thats it...

I have accidentally left wort in mine for a month. It was erupting with mold. When cleaned (hot PBW both ways) about a good half pound of goo chunks came flowing out. Won't be doing that again.

 

[ChocolateMaltyBalls]

That might be a good candidate for a lye wash.

 

[mpcluever]

Get some Sodium Hydroxide. Half the price of PBW and 10X the cleaning power. Yes you should probably wear gloves, but even a fairly stiff solution doesn't start burning my hands until a few minutes and a quick rinse and it's good. On my chiller with PBW, I'd still see hop chunks after several rounds. With Sodium Hydroxide I do 2 rounds just to be redundant and no chunks 2nd round. In my kegs on the washer, PBW would occasionally leave a little dried on beer residue after a half hour on the washer. With sodium hydroxide, they are brilliantly clean every time. I can't tell you enough how great it is at cleaning, especially on the things I can't get at with a brush.

 

[b-boy]

The NaOH won't hurt pumps or hoses? Do you just rinse with fresh water afterward?

I had an issue last brew day with some sort of blockage in my chiller. That was bad enough. When it suddenly cleared it occurred to me that some nasty gunk is now circulating in my wort.

 

[mpcluever]

The NaOH won't hurt pumps or hoses? Do you just rinse with fresh water afterward?

I had an issue last brew day with some sort of blockage in my chiller. That was bad enough. When it suddenly cleared it occurred to me that some nasty gunk is now circulating in my wort.

Not at all. I can't find the list of materials right now it's safe with, but I've seen many posts in here from DudaDiesel (where I got my chiller) recommending using lye to clean the chiller. I've been using it for years now and no problems whatsoever.

Multiple options. One of the best things to do is to add a metal strainer at the bottom of your kettle to remove these particles before the wort enters the chiller, but some recipes require you to leave those in.

Most important thing to do is backflush the wort side with hot water after each use. This will knock most of gunk out before it ever becomes a serious clog. You will also want to sanitize it right before each use, either a lye bath, or pbw, or starsans. For most brewers these two steps alone will be all you ever need to do. We tend to use and prefer lye, but that’s just because we already have several tons on hand for making biodiesel (where the diesel in DudaDiesel comes from). We carry 99+% lye for anyone looking for it: http://www.dudadiesel.com/search.php?query="sodium+hydroxide" PBW and Starsans won’t unclog the unit as well, but they sanitize just as well and are far safer.

If your wort is really hoppy, or you’ve just been using it for years on end, you will notice more permanent clogs which can be seen by the decreased output flowrate of your wort (the unit honeycombs with multiple fluid paths inside, so its near impossible to clog it to the point of it being unusable, but it can clog to where you lose efficiency). In this event you will first want to flush with a lye solution to break apart any oils or organics holding the chunks in, and then for the more serious protein pieces you will want to place your chiller in your oven and set it to self-cleaning mode for 2-3 hours and let everything simply burn out. One last wash with water can then remove the ash left inside.

 

[b-boy]

Thanks. I generally do a forward/backward PBW and StarSan flush after every brew day. However, I've haven't done a really thorough cleaning since I got it. I think it's effecting my efficiency. Sounds like it's way overdue.

 

[mpcluever]

Do you just rinse with fresh water afterward?

Sorry, didn't address this part. Yes you need to flush it with water. I do a final full force city water pressure flush both ways after the lye washes.

 

[Duda_Energy]

The NaOH won't hurt pumps or hoses? Do you just rinse with fresh water afterward?

Let me know what your pump, pump gaskets, pump gears, pump seals, etc and hoses are made of and I can get you a complete compatibility list.

 

[b-boy]

Let me know what your pump, pump gaskets, pump gears, pump seals, etc and hoses are made of and I can get you a complete compatibility list.

I have a March pump with the plastic head. I use high temp plastic tubing. I'm in the process of switching over to silicon tubing. Everything else is SS.

 

[b-boy]

duplicate post

 

[Duda_Energy]

The SS is fine, the silicone is fine (assuming you meant silicone and not silicon); the 'plastic' parts are *probably* fine but I would need to know exactly what type of plastic to promise that.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

I love oxyclean (I use it nearly everywhere) but I don't think that it's the best thing to use for a plate chiller. It's a good surfactant (loosens crud very well) but it doesn't really reduce the size of the crud. Lye/caustic/soda will turn organic compounds to sludge.

That being said, if lye isn't handy, oxyclean is better than nothing.

My current washing procedure is: hook up water line and backflush with both hot & cold water turned on. Switch to hot water only, and close the water tap (preventing any water from running out). Let sit for an hour or two, and repeat the regimen. So far I've used lye once.

MC

What about Barkeepers Friend? That **** can remove pretty much anything off of anything any time ive used it to clean.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

What about Barkeepers Friend? That **** can remove pretty much anything off of anything any time ive used it to clean.

I'm no chemist, but barkeeper's friend only active ingredient (*) is oxalic acid. It's recommended to remove rust/rust stains from oxidized carbon.

(*) The non-active ingredients are used as a scouring powder and require hard physical contact to do their work. I think that other products would do better.

It might be worth it to try a dirty/baked on stainless steel pot on the stove with a barkeeper's friend solution, and only use water movement to see if it does anything. My hunch is that it won't do much.

MC

 

[Duda_Energy]

Barkeepers' Friend is fine with stainless, but can do slow damage to copper. Basically its on the same level as Star Sans - good for a quick rinse, but make sure you wash it out with water

 

[b-boy]

I'm no chemist, but barkeeper's friend only active ingredient (*) is oxalic acid. It's recommended to remove rust/rust stains from oxidized carbon.

(*) The non-active ingredients are used as a scouring powder and require hard physical contact to do their work. I think that other products would do better.

It might be worth it to try a dirty/baked on stainless steel pot on the stove with a barkeeper's friend solution, and only use water movement to see if it does anything. My hunch is that it won't do much.

MC

I don't know what's in it, but it's magic. I had pots I was ready to toss. Nothing worked on them. Bar keepers friend cleaned them up with almost no effort.