How do YOU clean YOUR SS 3 kettle all electric system

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RoatanBill

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I've watched several videos that feature the type of equipment I'm leaning towards; namely three SS kettles with pumps moving the liquids around in an all electric setup. The Spike and Blichmann kettles are in contention.

The video from Spike Systems ( [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmYMEIXRf98[/ame] ) suggests cleaning is as simple as adding a cleaning agent and pumping it through the system at an elevated temperature and then rinsing with hot water, again using the pumps.

Is that true in your experience?

How many of you disassemble the system and take it outside to manually scrub / pressure wash it? Scrub with what? How aggressive? What parts require special attention?

Since all advertising is professional lying, I'm after YOUR real world experience.
 
I have a 2 kettle rig which is automated so I run a clean in place system by exchanging my MLTs sparge ring and my BKs whirlpool arm for plastic spinning ball spray heads. I run PBW through, using the elements to heat it.

That said, the key is bottom drains. If the system doesn't have a bottom drain, stray junk will just collect at the bottom of the kettles. Obviously the HLT needs no cleaning. But, to clean in place without CIP equipment, you can easily do it as long as you have a shop-vac. Run some PBW through, heat it up with the boil element, and use a micro-fiber cloth to wipe everything down inside. Then drain and shop vac out the remains. Repeat a few times with fresh water and you are good to go.
 
BrunDog:

Oh boy. Your post brought up more stuff I know nothing about or at least brought up more issues.

Sparge Ring? I'm going to have to look that up to see why anyone would use one since my impression is that sparging is just covering the solids with a layer of clean water and allowing the natural flow thru the solids to proceed in removing more sugars. At some point, when the BK is at a level it's supposed to be, the sparging process essentially stops as no more wort is required in the BK.

I could see the necessity of a sparge spray mechanism to help make sure sparge water is more evenly distributed, but, again, my impression from numerous videos is that the solids are always below liquid and therefore adding water in a directed fashion isn't necessary. I'll have to check this out.

Adding water to wort, especially if it's splashed in or directed in via a nozzle pointed in a given direction should cause enough mixing of water to above solids wort to relatively evenly distribute the new water so it can carry away the sugars. What am I missing?

Whirlpool arm? All I've seen so far relating to whirlpool is a nozzle pointing in a particular direction to push the liquid into a rotating mass. That nozzle is simply the output end of a pumps flow. I was unaware of an "arm" being employed to accomplish this. I'll have to look that up.

"plastic spinning ball spray heads" - never heard of this. Why not just use the pump output flow and direct it by hand around the perimeter of the kettle? How do you get rid of the crud left on the kettle walls by the foam that develops?

"Bottom drain" - I've seen some higher end commercial equipment with contoured bottoms that sport a drain, but the normal kettles for home users have no such equipment. The average kettle sits flat on a table top of some sort and the only drain near the bottom is at least an inch or two above it with a tube sucking relatively close to the actual bottom. I can see that getting rid of the left over residue is important. I'd use paper towels as I'd assume the exhaust from a vacuum would add more dust to the air than any crud I might leave behind by using a paper towel.

I assume CIP equipment means specifically purchased and employed Clean In Place equipment. I'll have to look that up.

From your post, I take it that you never or almost never do anything but use in place cleaning. That's good to know as I assumed it would be possible to do an adequate cleaning without disassembling all the wires and valves and pump heads as that would be one heck of a job especially if it needed to be done per brew session.

Thank You
 
BrunDog:

I just read the first 4 pages of your rig write up. Now I see what you're talking about with bottom drains. You put them in yourself. This makes me rethink purchasing prebuilt kettles. I never considered bottom drains but they make so much sense, now that I think about it for so many reasons, that not having them seems backwards.

The Spike kettles attracted my attention due to TIG welded ports on thicker metal. The Blickmann Kettles have the nicest false bottom I've seen. I was looking at these vendors because of specific items they had, but the bottom drain idea is even more important now that I've considered the advantages.

For both Spike and Blickmann, I never liked that long lever of port to nipple to T to nipple to valve to connector to connector to hose sticking straight out and just begging to stress the port to kettle wall connection.

The TIG welds Spike shows is an "autogenous" TIG weld that isn't recommended for any structural application. Their video shows their TIG welder NOT using a SS filler rod, and just "walking the cup" around a port he's installing. Not the best practice. I considered TIG welding up shorter connections myself as I have the equipment and necessary SS purge gear required for food grade welding.

The Blickmann video shows their internal pickup tube that can't be accidentally rotated out of place by a mash paddle.

Both those things mean absolutely nothing if the drain is on the actual bottom of the kettle. Brilliant idea on your part.
 
Thanks. Certainly not to take anything from Spike or Blichmann - both VERY high quality kettle manufacturers. I use cheap kettles so I didn't mind doing weird things to them. That said, I wanted a high level of automation and realized after having side ports with pickups that priming pumps was more difficult and automatic cleaning was almost impossible. The bottom drains I have are still not perfect - they would need be conical for that!
 
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