Are you as lazy as me?

After a year and a few batches, I finally decided to clean my Blickmann 3 part ball valve. It was fairly easy to disassemble (Not as easy as a Stout or Brewers Hardware one), but was I in for a surprise. We "cleaned" the ball valve after every brew by cycling heated PBW through the valve for about 30 minutes, the cycling Star San for about 5 minutes.


I used a toothbrush after soaking in PBW overnight and got most of the junk off. I decided to boil the pieces and the second pix shows what came off the threads, after I had cleaned with the brush and thought they were clean.

Guess I will have to clean every time now by taking apart like I do the Stout valves.

Think I know what I am doing this weekend, have the same valve.

If you open the ball valve half-way while recirculating the hot PBW that should get them pretty clean.

orangehero said:

If you open the ball valve half-way while recirculating the hot PBW that should get them pretty clean.

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Agreed. Just make sure to rotate the valve while recirculating. This has never been a problem for our setup since doing that.

tdawg183 said:

Agreed. Just make sure to rotate the valve while recirculating. This has never been a problem for our setup since doing that.

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Have you taken the valve apart? Mine always "looked" clean. Also, I am not sure throttling the supply side on a pump is good.

I only circulate a litre or 2 through it when kettle is boiling to sanitize it, and rinse some water through it after brewing.

See no evil, hear no evil.

oakbarn said:

Have you taken the valve apart? Mine always "looked" clean. Also, I am not sure throttling the supply side on a pump is good.

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Yes actually, the only reason we started doing this was because of what was found the first time it was disassembled. And great clarification for this NOT to be done on the supply side of the pump. We run it wide open when the valve feeds the pump, we only throttle the valve once the flow is switched so that the valve is on the output of the pump.

I also have found that taking apart my Stout 2 piece valves that they look clean as we do it every time now ( and clean them anyway apart as it is easy). We used to have a igloo mash tun and the bazzoka screen. We decided one time to boil and clean it as well and it was terrible. We has used the "flow" cleaner through it and force cleaner backwards but the gunk that came out was nasty when we boiled it. We switched to a false bottom.

I had the same problem with the 3 piece ball valves.
A vendor said they were trying to source a valve that would
completely encapsulate the ball. So no dead space when the valve is closed.
But I did not hear if they found one.

I replaced my ball valves with butterfly valves.
So easy to keep clean. They are great.

Not a perfect solution on the pump output because not as much control
on the flow rate as a ball valve.

Bob

Are you as lazy as me?

No, I am lazier, I don't use a valve that I have to clean...I boil and ferment in the kettle, then rack to kegs.

wilserbrewer said:

Are you as lazy as me?

No, I am lazier, I don't use a valve that I have to clean...I boil and ferment in the kettle, then rack to kegs.

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So that's why you have so many kettles!