OK gang I am a new unitank owner and have what will be a elementary question so my apologies upfront.
My question is for you all that have the 10 gallon and larger fermenters.
How do sanitize after cleaning and how to do you sanitize on brew day?
My plan is after I clean is to use Saniclean with my CIP ball and drain and let air dry. but trying to figure how best to sanitize once brew day comes.
I keg, clean and sanitize my CF15 on brew day. I do use CIP and I do CIP with star-san lol. Yes it foams but foam is good...here is my process starting with after my third keg is filled:
vent the pressure from the tank and remove the 4" TC cap and the manifold (I don't use a cooling coil)
dump remaining contents to a bucket
carry the fermentor to driveway, remove all the doo-dads (gaskets, butterfly valves, racking arm, sample valve, thermowell...), lightly rinsing the parts as I go and drop them into a bucket
remove the fermenter lid (with Spike it's the whole top of the fermentor)
hose out the fermentor paying attention to get any globs of yeast out of the ports
wipe down the krausen ring until it is visibly clean with a soft sponge and rinse tank again
clean the lid in my utility sink with a soft sponge...I ferment very very full so the lid will always have a lot of krausen
move the conical to my cleaning area in the garage (close to my sink and my electrical outlet) and reattach the lid
mount the CIP ball to the 1.5"TC on lid and mount hoses to the conical body ports
put a bucket of hot PBW solution under the 2" port on bottom of cone with hoses from body ports draining into the bucket
put heating element in the bucket and control bucket temp to 135F with inkbird controller
put sump pump in the bucket connected to the CIP ball
CIP for 30 minutes
Dump the hot PBW solution onto the rinsed doo-dads
Replace bucket of hot PBW solution with bucket of hot clean water, move the sump pump and heating element to this rinse bucket and CIP for 10 minutes at 135F
Replace the bucket of hot rinse water with a bucket of 2 gallons star-san
Drain the PBW off the doo-dads (save, it will be used for cleaning the boil kettle with in in an hour or two) and move the doo-dads to the hot rinse water
CIP for 3 minutes at room temperature. There will be some foam. I stop the CIP pump when the foam climbs out of the bucket but I usually get at least 3 min before this occurs.
Put away the sump pump, drain the rinse water from the doo-dads and cover them with the star-san. The rinse water is also saved for cleaning the brew kettle.
Move the fermentor to my fermentation freezer and reassemble wet.
Close all the valves
By now brew day is well into the boil. Just before pumping from kettle to fermentor I will dump any star san that collected at bottom of cone.
It seems like a lot but is very doable in parallel to brewing without adding any time to the brew day. Once or twice a year I do a keg, clean and passivate day. That needs its own day because the passivation happens after the acid rinse when the unit dries and I'd like that to go at least 12 hours so usually day before a brew day.