Recirculation Cleaning/Rinse Cycle

[SevenSeaScourge]

Would a few of you please share your recirculation cleaning/rinsing process for your BK/Pump/Chiller post brew day?

After recirculating your cleaner and draining your system, do you fill your kettle back up with fresh water, recirc that and call it a day? Is this sufficient enough for a rinse? Is there a benefit to recirculating the rinse? Or do you fill the kettle and pump that rinse water through the chiller into a drain/bucket? If so, how much water are you using?

I'm tired of wasting so much time and water trying to rinse the cleaner out of my system. I'm curious how others are doing this?

 

[OilfieldHippie]

I do BIAB with a 20gal kettle, a Chugger pump, and plate chiller. After the last drop of wort is in the fermenter, my process is:
1 - Fill the kettle with hose water up to the highest bit of boil-created-mess.
2 - Add a scoop of PBW and stir with a plastic mash paddle (sometimes it doesn't all the way dissolve and will just sit on the bottom). Scrub off all deposits I can see with a scrub sponge.
3 - Change the hoses on the plate chiller to back-flush it during re-circulation.
4 - Recirculate for as long as it takes me to clean and organize everything else I used during brew day (about 10 minutes).
5 - Drain the kettle.
6 - Rinse all surfaces with hose water and give any trouble spots a scrub while the pump is running. I keep about a gallon in the kettle.
7 - Turn off the pump and make up about 2 gallons of Star-San.
8 - Recirculate the Star-San and make sure the entire kettle and lid are rinsed with it.
9 - Drain Star-San.
10 - Use my shop vac to remove all water from all the components, removing hoses as I go, finishing by getting the kettle dry.

All-in-all it takes about 20 minutes and probably uses about 20 gallons of water. I would like to eventually collect at least some of the chill water for use during cleaning, but haven't yet. It would be warmer than hose water, which would help with dissolving the PBW.

 

[dmcman73]

I just recently did this.

After a brew day I first wash out the brew kettle and rinse all the debris out of it. I then fill it about part way, enough for the water to cover the electric element in it and heat the water. I then mix some PBW into the water then recirculate it through my pump and CFC. I let that go for a few minutes and then I swap the hoses around and recirculate in reverse.

Once that's done, I dump all the water, fill the brew kettle half way with clean hot water from the tap and then I take the hose from the output of the CFC and stick it into an empty bucket and turn the pump on. I let that go until all the water in the kettle is drained out into the bucket and that's my rinse.

I don't use StarSan since it's not a cleaner, it's a sanitizer. My equipment is clean after the PBW run and I sanitize my equipment on brew day by running boiling wort through it for 15 minutes prior to flame out.

Oh, and I also use a clean shop Vac to remove the water from the pumps and CFC like OilfieldHippie does.

 

[SevenSeaScourge]

So it seems like a one-way pass with rinse water should be sufficient enough to remove any leftover cleaner. I've tried this and can still feel a film/slipperiness from the cleaner on my kettle walls and pump/chiller fittings. If I rinse it again with fresh water several times, it goes away. Maybe this is nothing to be concerned about? I wonder if my water chemistry is the cause of this "residue" since my cleaner is mixed to manufacturer's specs?

The Shop-Vac is a nice idea. I think I'll incorporate this into my brew day setup. Are you both using one with the blower function to force air through the chiller, hoses, etc.?

 

[dmcman73]

I've noticed a film on my kettles after washing parts with bare hands. If I wash them while wearing gloves I don't notice any film. I think it's not so much that it's not rinsing off the equipment but that it's not rising off your skin because I can feel a film on other things like a glass that was nowhere near the PBW solution I was using to clean.. Maybe it's just me but that's what I've noticed.

 

[OilfieldHippie]

The Shop-Vac is a nice idea. I think I'll incorporate this into my brew day setup. Are you both using one with the blower function to force air through the chiller, hoses, etc.?

I've always used the suction side. The ID of the fittings on my vacuum fit almost exactly over the camlocks on my equipment. So, I just use the suction to pull all the water out.

I do the Star-San rinse because it is supposed to help remove the film from the PBW and also because my equipment lives in my garage and I'm worried about growing a mold or some such if I didn't get everything dry enough. It may be completely unnecessary, but it makes me feel better. Everything is sanitized on Brew Day by recirculating boiling wort for ~10 minutes.

 

[dmcman73]

I just use the suction side to pull any water out, just as oilfieldhippie pointed out, it fits right over my cam lock fittings and does a nice job.

I always have i in the back of my mind that if I use the blower side, it's going to push some debris into the system.

As for the StarSan follow up, it's actually not a bad idea, in fact, leave some StarSan in the kettle and all for a bit to Passivate the Stainless steel before draining it out. http://wine.appstate.edu/sites/wine.appstate.edu/files/Diversey_PassivationofStainlessSteel.pdf