Best way to clean beerstone from stainless

[Harry482]

I have a stainless conical that is starting to get a healthy buildup of beerstone. I clean it each time with oxyclean and then sanitize with iodophor before filling. This process has not prevented the problem. I have also used bar keepers friend to no avail. Should I try PBW? Any other secret weapons against this? The stuff is as bad as a barnacle.

 

[gromitdj]

Five Star has a product called Beer Stone Remover that is reported to work pretty well, although I have not tried it. It is on their website as coming soon, but I've seen it at my LHBS.

Beer Stone Remover

It was reviewed in this thread with some skepticism, but I trust the OP.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

heres an old blog thread relating to that issue
http://www.brewersfriend.com/2013/08/16/dude-your-beer-line-stinks-wash-it-out/

 

[shortyz]

pickling paste, itll be gone in about 10 seconds. if anyone needs any info on using it just holler.

 

[November]

Sodium Hydroxide works wonders on beerstone.

Follow all the appropriate saftey steps, of course.

 

[DrinksWellWithOthers]

Beer line cleaner removes beer stone. Just rinse well.

 

[Vandulus]

Five Star has a product called Beer Stone Remover that is reported to work pretty well, although I have not tried it. It is on their website as coming soon, but I've seen it at my LHBS.

Beer Stone Remover

It was reviewed in this thread with some skepticism, but I trust the OP.

I just used Five Star's Beer Stone Remover a couple weeks ago in my Brewtech Kettle and it worked as advertised. It's much easier than using BKF and scrubbing the beer stone out.

 

[tri_clamp_ninja]

This may not be of help at your house but commercially I worked at a facility that found beerstone in a few of their tanks at one point. They implemented a practice of hot rinse, phosphoric acid CIP cycle (20 mins), Hot Rinse, Sodium Hydroxide CIP cycle (20 mins), hot rinse, check PH, cold rinse, check rinse water and tank wall swab both with ATP meter. If ATP meter reads "0" then you are good to go and sani as usual before next use. If ATP meter reads anything "1" or higher then give another hot rinse followed by another cold rinse and a second round of ATP meter checks. Rarely did you not get a "0" on the second check, if you even had to.

Do you have access to all this stuff? I assume no since you are posting on homebrewtalk about your at home conical. The reason I say that is to point out the importance of proper initial passivation, as well as regular re passivation (I generally do quarterly on commercial equipment being used 2-5 times a week), to prevent beer stone.

 

[HausBrauerei_Harvey]

I made my keggle from an old keg I bought from a brewery, it had a healthy beerstone on it, some folks recommend I use TSP cleaner and it did work well. Still required some elbow grease but did work well. you can get this at most hardware stores.

 

[mabrungard]

This came recently on the Probrewer forum regarding beerstone from stainless airstones. The most highly and frequent recommendation was to use an ultrasonic cleaner with an appropriate cleaning fluid. Not exactly useful inside a fermenter, but it might give you ideas!

 

[Jaybird]

Fill it full with HOT HOT HOT water and PBW. Let set 24-36 hours and it will fall right off. Its how I clean my entire brewery. The stuff is amazing.

Cheers
Jay

 

[Weezy]

+1 on the Sodium hydroxide (i.e. dollar store oven cleaner spray can)

 

[Wayne1]

Removing Beerstone: A Look at Alternative Cleaning Methods