Keep Your Brewhouse in Peak Form
Your home brewery is much the same as many small craft- and microbreweries. You share the same goal with commercial breweries: to make good-tasting, clean beer. You are also using much of the same equipment. You might not have stainless-steel conical fermenters, bright tanks, or a real heat exchanger, but you make do with glass carboys, copper tubing, and Cornelius kegs.
One of the biggest differences between your home brewery and a microbrewery is how the equipment is maintained. Commercial breweries follow very strict maintenance regimens. The use of stainless steel is a big bonus for both the professional brewery and the home brewery. It lasts forever, resists staining, and is easily visually inspected. There is no reason you cannot maintain and sanitize equipment relatively the same way the big dogs do.
One of the most heinous crimes of homebrewing is the lack of post-brewing and post-fermentation cleaning. Quite often the brewing or bottling session goes on into the wee hours of the morning. Equipment gets pushed aside to be dealt with in the morning. Morning turns into after work, and before you know it you are faced with dirty equipment by the time your next brewing session rolls around. After you brew, look at your equipment and ask, “Would I eat out of that?” If the answer is “no,” keep on cleaning.
What, Why, and How
Hot Liquor Tank
The “hot liquor tank” refers to your mash and sparge water bucket. Chances are that this also doubles as the bottling bucket.
If you use gypsum or other water treatments in your mash water, you will notice calcium deposits left on the walls and bottom of the tank. There is no need to be concerned about this causing contamination or serious off-flavors, although you do want to work with a controlled pH and mineral content. If your tank doubles as a bottling bucket, that is even more reason to keep it clean. Occassionally cleaning with a mild acid, such as vinegar, will remove this buildup. It’s the same solution many people use to clean their coffee pots.
Mash Tun
Be this a cooler, kettle, or bucket, it should also be free of calcium and other mineral deposits. All sugar residue should be cleaned out, and then the vessel should be dried to prevent any mold growth (unless you are trying to make a Guinness sour mash, but that is a different subject altogether). Any sparging mechanisms and valves should also be disassembled and cleaned. A gentle soap, such as liquid dish soap, will facilitate cleaning the mash tun.
Kettle
During the boil, proteins and hop acids adhere to the top of the kettle to form a tenacious buildup. Also, mineral deposits accumulate over several boils. To prolong the life of your kettle and decrease the risk of off-flavors, the kettle should be kept free of these sugars, minerals, and hop residues. This is of special importance with enamel kettles. Clean these right away to avoid sticky or stuck-on residue; you want to do a minimum of scrubbing and scraping to avoid chipping the enamel and exposing the underlying steel, which can rust. A stong cleaner, such as trisodium phosphate, should be used on the buildup, and an occasional vinegar wash will control mineral deposits.
Kettles with valves need special attention. Make sure you are using a valve with a large enough orifice to allow cleaning. Stainless-steel ball valves are best. The outside of the ball valve does not need to be stainless, yet the ball itself should be.
Racking Canes and Hoses
If you are siphoning out of your kettle you should be using a metal racking cane. Copper is best, although it gets quite hot. These can be easily cleaned and inexpensively replaced. Plastic is the best choice for racking and bottling use, because you can visibly inspect it for cleanliness. Plastic hoses are cheap. When they are dirty or cloudy, for God’s sake throw them away! Plastic hoses are great for
pre-boiling.
Fermenters
Fermenters should always be kept clean. They should be sanitized after the fermentation cycle and stored clean.
Cleaning Solutions and Procedures
The most common cleaning and sanitizing solutions and equipment for the homebrewer are:
• Common household bleach (unscented)
• Iodophor
• TSP
• Water
• Plastic scouring pads
• White vinegar
Bleach
Bleach kills upon contact and is very effective at removing most grime. Use it at a ratio of one ounce per gallon. Always use it in cold water; hot water will evaporate the chlorine. Hot water, however, is a very effective way to rinse bleach. Bleach is corrosive to copper, brass, and stainless steel, so limit exposure. This is a good all-purpose cleaner. Rinse very well.
Iodophor
Iodophor is an iodine solution used for sanitizing. This is a good solution for filling fermenters and kegs for storage. Mix with cold water to get an amber color. Iodophor has a five-minute contact limit. It will stain plastic. Contrary to popular belief, iodophor should be rinsed when used on a small scale such as home use.
TSP
Trisodium phosphate is mixed at a ratio of one ounce per gallon of water. This is a very effective and safe cleaner. TSP is non-corrosive and effectively removes scale. Rinse very well.
Water
Water is a little-used cleaning solution. But with a scouring pad and some water you can do a lot. Most brewers think that they need some kind of chemical to clean anything. Boiling water takes care of anything you need killed in the beer-making process. The best part is you don’t have to rinse water after cleaning with it.
3M-type scouring pads
These are the plastic type, not the steel SOS-type pads. They remove scale and such from enamel and stainless steel. Be careful with these on plastics; they can scratch. The finer pads are better.
Vinegar
Dilute one part vinegar with two to four parts water and use the solution to remove mineral deposits from equipment.
Cleaning Regimen
When you are ready to brew, if you follow good post-brewing practices, all of your equipment should already be relatively clean. Visually inspect your hot liquor tank and mash tun. If necessary, clean them with a scouring pad and water, a light bleach solution, and TSP. If you use a manifold-type false bottom, rinse all of its parts and assemble it.
After the sparge and filling the kettle, rinse all the parts you just used and clean them with the solution of your choice. By the time everything is spotless again, your wort should be up to a boil.
Before chilling your wort, soak your transfer hoses in bleach or iodophor until ready for use. If you are using a counter-flow-type heat exchanger (chiller) fill your hot-liquor tank with iodophor or bleach and run about two gallons through the heat exchanger. Stop the flow of the sanitizer and let it sit one minute for bleach, five minutes for iodophor. If you use a metal racking cane to siphon the wort through the heat exchanger, rinse it off and toss it in your boil to sanitize it.
Displace the sanitizer with boiling or boiled water. Then start the transfer through the heat exchanger and allow the hot wort to push the water out of the coil. Stop the wort flow and then proceed with the transfer into the fermenter. After this transfer run about two gallons of boiling water through the heat exchanger followed by bleach or iodophor. If you use bleach, you will want to rinse the heat exchanger again. If you use iodophor, stop the flow and cap off the other end, allowing the iodophor to sit in the coil until the next time you use it.
You can find plastic caps called screw caps at home-improvement stores. These are the little caps used for nuts on children’s swing sets to prevent scratching (or as mom always put it “poking your eye out”). These caps make excellent hose caps.
Clean the rest of your equipment with a mild cleaning solution of your choice. Be sure to dry everything.
Commercial breweries use caustic solutions daily on hoses and other equipment, particularly the heat exchanger. The caustic is generally a high-alkaline solution of sodium hydroxide. This is not recommended for home use because it is dangerous if mishandled. A good practice would be to clean your heat exchanger every two to three brews with an acid solution to remove calcium and lime buildup.
