Ashevillain
Level 3 Potions Master
The least fun part of brewing is cleaning, yet we all know it's important to maintain clean gear.
Over the past ~year i've made many changes to my cleaning process that has really improved my quality of life (aka minutes of my life not spent cleaning).
But the one thing I have not been able to get past is when using PBW, it leaves a residue which is pretty tough to fully remove. I've done plenty of research and maybe its just me being overzealous about removing it, because most people don't seem to have the same problem. But the standard rinse it for ~1min with hot water has definitely left significant residue on my gear.
Here is my process:
I have 5kegs 4buckets and a carboy that are frequently going through rotation.
I use relatively low concentrations of pbw: .5-1oz/gal
The kegs, when I don't just immediately rinse/sanitize, i use a keg/carboy washer with pbw and then a keg rinsing setup that runs hose water through the 2 diptubes via some disconnects, let this rinse ~10 mins then fill with sanitizer and hope its good. Sometimes ill check these a few hours later and notice the water hasn't cleared due to residue from the pbw... so i dump, rinse again ~5mins, fill with sanitizer again and wait to see if it clears. This is annoying as hell.
Carboys are even more of a pain, I normally just rinse/scrub/sanitize immediately after use instead of pbw. But every ~2 months I feel the need to thoroughly wash all my gear and get it as close to new as possible. I cant set and forget on rinsing carboys because I haven't made carboy a rinser yet.
Before I invest more time and money into automated carboy rinsing, I thought I should hear what more experienced people have to say about this.
Mainly for my carboys and kegs, I need to either change my process, my chemicals, or make some sort of bucket lid/stand that i can shove a hose with a cleaning wand in to rinse the pbw out of my carboys after washing,
I'd much prefer to just have to rinse less period to save water while still maintaining clean gear.
Helpipe:
Over the past ~year i've made many changes to my cleaning process that has really improved my quality of life (aka minutes of my life not spent cleaning).
But the one thing I have not been able to get past is when using PBW, it leaves a residue which is pretty tough to fully remove. I've done plenty of research and maybe its just me being overzealous about removing it, because most people don't seem to have the same problem. But the standard rinse it for ~1min with hot water has definitely left significant residue on my gear.
Here is my process:
I have 5kegs 4buckets and a carboy that are frequently going through rotation.
I use relatively low concentrations of pbw: .5-1oz/gal
The kegs, when I don't just immediately rinse/sanitize, i use a keg/carboy washer with pbw and then a keg rinsing setup that runs hose water through the 2 diptubes via some disconnects, let this rinse ~10 mins then fill with sanitizer and hope its good. Sometimes ill check these a few hours later and notice the water hasn't cleared due to residue from the pbw... so i dump, rinse again ~5mins, fill with sanitizer again and wait to see if it clears. This is annoying as hell.
Carboys are even more of a pain, I normally just rinse/scrub/sanitize immediately after use instead of pbw. But every ~2 months I feel the need to thoroughly wash all my gear and get it as close to new as possible. I cant set and forget on rinsing carboys because I haven't made carboy a rinser yet.
Before I invest more time and money into automated carboy rinsing, I thought I should hear what more experienced people have to say about this.
Mainly for my carboys and kegs, I need to either change my process, my chemicals, or make some sort of bucket lid/stand that i can shove a hose with a cleaning wand in to rinse the pbw out of my carboys after washing,
I'd much prefer to just have to rinse less period to save water while still maintaining clean gear.
Helpipe: