How do you all sanitize your recirculation/whirlpool pump?

[trapae]

Just wondering what other people do. I whirlpool after flame out either for whirlpool hopping, or during cooling with my immersion chiller. I have always just ran boiling wort through the pump and whirlpool arm the last 10 minutes of the boil, but it’s a pain because of cavitation because of the boil. I recently looked up how long it takes to sanitize/pasteurize water with boiling water and it looks like it’s only about one minute, longer for lower temperatures. So I’m wondering if I’ve been doing this 10 min for no reason. Like I could just run the pump for a couple minutes after flame out and that would suffice. Just wondering what everybody else does. Running star sand through it before the boil doesn’t make a lot of sense since I use that same pump to transfer my mash TUN to the kettle directly before the boil.
Thoughts?

 

[Bobby_M]

There is no reason to try pumping while you're still dumping heat into the system. At flameout, just run the recirc for 2 minutes with the pump output throttling valve only half open. With that restriction, the pump will not cavitate. I've been doing this for 15 years with no infections. It's also what I recommend for people with immersion chillers. Do not boil them for 15 minutes.

 

[Broken Crow]

This is a great example of what an ethical guy @Bobby_M is... He wants to help wether he gets a sale or not and never pushes his gear. I was just about to post about dealing with it and conclude with a "If it still annoys you and you don't have a Riptide or Flow with the bleeder valve, you can add one with an upward facing tee on your pump inlet with a reducer bushing and 1/4"PRV:"
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/prv_npt14_35psi.htm
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/tee12.htm
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/npthexbush.htm?1=1&CartID=0
...just sayin'

 

[trapae]

Thanks, I recently decided to go over all of my steps and rethinking them. This helps. I do have a bleeder valve on both my pumps courtesy of Bobby’s parts.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, I have a 3v2p single tier herms and my boil kettle pump has hot fluids in it for pretty much the entire session, first recirculating the strike liquor in the BK as it comes up to strike temp, then pushing the underlet strike volume into the mlt, then after ~5 minutes the recirculation starts, then an hour or so later the ~50 minute long fly sparge happens, then I recirculate the pre-boil until the wort hits 200°F at which point I shut that pump down until the end of the boil.

One can practically pasteurize liquids at any temperature above 160°F in fairly short order - and as low as 135°F if one has a half hour to kill - so by the time the wort ends up in the kettle that boil kettle pump head is definitely clear of critters...

Cheers!

 

[EscapeArtistBrewing]

.... At flameout, just run the recirc for 2 minutes with the pump output throttling valve only half open....

Bobby, is your time/temp based on Pasteurization protocol? (I see there are several time vs. temp procedures to choose from.)
I've been looking for "how to sanitize recirc tubing post-boil" guildlines/best practices, to no avail.

I believe I read (from you?) that pumps don't like boiling fluid on the input due to increased cavitation effects. Personally, I wait until the kettle boil settles down before pump-on.

A naive question: should one do the pump+tubing hookup before or after the boil? If after the boil, should one run some Star San through the tube before connecting things up (assuming tubing has previously been sitting around, clean and sanitized from the last brew session), or will the heat take care of all?

 

[EscapeArtistBrewing]

This is a great example of what an ethical guy @Bobby_M is... He wants to help wether he gets a sale or not and never pushes his gear. I was just about to post about dealing with it and conclude with a "If it still annoys you and you don't have a Riptide or Flow with the bleeder valve, you can add one with an upward facing tee on your pump inlet with a reducer bushing and 1/4"PRV:"
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/prv_npt14_35psi.htm
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/tee12.htm
https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/npthexbush.htm?1=1&CartID=0
...just sayin'

Second. He is ethical, honest, runs a well-stocked shop, and is more generous with his time and talent than most of us could ever be.

 

[Bobby_M]

Bobby, is your time/temp based on Pasteurization protocol? (I see there are several time vs. temp procedures to choose from.)
I've been looking for "how to sanitize recirc tubing post-boil" guildlines/best practices, to no avail.

I believe I read (from you?) that pumps don't like boiling fluid on the input due to increased cavitation effects. Personally, I wait until the kettle boil settles down before pump-on.

A naive question: should one do the pump+tubing hookup before or after the boil? If after the boil, should one run some Star San through the tube before connecting things up (assuming tubing has previously been sitting around, clean and sanitized from the last brew session), or will the heat take care of all?

2 minutes at boiling temps is way more than enough, but it's also giving the valves and tubing a bit of time to heat up since they do have a non-zero thermal mass. More cavitation happens at higher temps and/or when the pump output is unrestricted so:

The higher the temp, the more restricted the pump should be to compensate. As the temp drops, you can gradually open up the flow. There is no problem pumping 212F wort with some pump restriction and even more so if you're not actively putting heating into the system.

We're also talking about a relative short time use case. I have been doing this process with my topsflo pump for 9 years and I haven't replaced an impeller, thrust washer or any other part (except for a DC power supply).

I don't ever intentionally star san my pump or tubing. It sees hot PBW solution after brewing for about 30 minutes followed by a thorough hot water rinse. Somewhat related, the system does get a citric acid passivation step once a year.

 

[day_trippr]

It sees hot PBW solution after brewing for about 30 minutes followed by a thorough hot water rinse. Somewhat related, the system does get a citric acid passivation step once a year.

How have you not had to replace a thrust washer? Are they made from something more durable than "teflon"? I do maybe 3 hot PBW cycles and one hot Citric cycle every year and often find one of the two (815pl) pumps has thinned down its teflon thrust washer to "screech mode", or very near. I keep a dozen on hand just on GPs...

Cheers!

 

[Bobby_M]

I'm just not going to take it apart ever until it makes noise or stops working. 8 years for a $140 pump, it owes me nothing.

 

[Bramling Cross]

I'm just not going to take it apart ever until it makes noise or stops working. 8 years for a $140 pump, it owes me nothing.

I've gradually drifted into this camp. After years of pulling the head and finding nothing to clean, I've let my maintenance cadence slip more and more toward nothing more than a yearly inspection when I do my big August rig tear down. I've found that an immediate and aggressive thirty second back flush on the pump seems to keep the head and impeller clean. Beyond that, 20-30mins recirculating the mash at 160-164F, followed by two 30 second bursts with boiling wort at the 80min and 20min marks in the boil seems to work. Frankly, I worry more about the lines than I do about the head and impeller.

A lesson that I learned as a kid, while working on irrigation ditches, was to leave a happy pump alone. They don't like being opened unless there's a reason to open them--even when you're trying to impress your uncles with your knowledge of pumps. A pump will let you know when it needs to be opened.

And that's not an easy lesson to take to heart in a hobby that viciously punishes lazy sanitation practices. It really gets under my skin because received brewing knowledge suggests that you need to be inspecting and scrubbing, right? But my beer keeps pouring crystal clear. Some fights aren't worth picking, I guess.