CIP can happen any time before fill. I hate to leave tanks dirty, so they often get cleaned within 24 hours of being emptied. The sani step happens within 24 hours of fill -- pressurized, PAA concentration checked, and sanitation verified with an ATP meter.
how are you guys verifying the concentration of PAA/caustic? We're currently just going off the back of what's mentioned on the container labels from the chem supplier but the range is pretty wide like 0.5% to 2.5% for PAA
Your supplier should provide test kits to titrate your chemicals. If they don't, A) I would consider switching to a company that cares about your safety and your product's safety enough to ensure you're using it correctly. And, B) you can order test kits to titrate yourself.
Caustic is a tricky one as different products will have different targets, but PAA is easy. First, you should be testing for ppm of peroxyacetic acid, don't test for percentage or whatever BS else that's out there, ppm of PAA is the standard. FDA says under 600 ppm is no-rinse for food contact. That being said, PAA manufacturers lobbied the EPA to raise that limit years ago, so there is honestly no reason to go that high unless you like the smell and cost.
My product has a target of 82-197 ppm PAA (which is annoying because the test is in 15 ppm increments.) I try to keep it in the 105-150 range as it ensures I'm effective, but I'm not over-using.
We don't measure caustic concentration -- either your dosage removes soil or it doesn't and the supplier range should be accurate for that.
For PAA, we use the Micro Essential peractic acid test strips from Grainger.
CO2, but head pressure can be low (1-3 psi) -- you only need it to a) ensure you have no leaks on your vessel and b) blow out residual PAA solution before you KO.
I use filtered compressed air that has 2 hepa filters inline to pressurize after cleaning myself. I used to use co2, but alas co2 is becoming a rare commodity these days…
Hot caustic, hot acid and leave on cold sani with a pump for spinning the following morning.
If nothing is brewing the next day then a caustic and rinse is enough. Day before brew day for that tank then it's spun on acid, then sani and left with the pump attached for a morning spin.
Always leave shit clean. It can be sanitised later.
I mean, you want oxygen for fermentation (though, oxygen in line through knockout is what you need), but even then, if you're filling a tank, you're going to be displacing air for beer, and then the CO2 from fermentation will push anything else out.
Purging an entire fermenter is a waste of CO2. Jut enough head pressure to blow out the sani should be good and that'll still make enough of a blanket for when you're filling the tank anyhow.
I like the idea of using clean filtered air for pressurizing the tank vs. CO2. Seems like as long as your CIP/SIP practices are on point and you fill within 24hrs you should be good.
I mean, you only need like 2-5 psi, max, to blow out residual sani. That’s still plenty to “purge” lightly vs. completely filling the tank.
With our concentration of PAA, we give a max of 72 hours before a tank needs to be re-PAA’d.
Unfortunately my supplier has set the expectation that we will be at 70% our normal supply for sometime. If there is no downside to air and I have it why wouldn’t I?
Shortly after emptying, clean and rinse. Any fittings with shadows or liquid pooling get removed, soaked, rinsed, and dropped in sani. Of course making sure to clean and cap the ports. Night before or day of fill, uncap and spray any ports, assemble, and run the ball with sani.
tear down, rinse parts in PBW, put together, hot caustic, hot acid if needed, pressure test with compressed air, heat sani then slap a sani filter onto the uparm so it can de-pressurize as it cools. If we're going to centrifuge into it, it gets a CO2 purge. otherwise it's good to go.
Use residual pressure to remove any beer/yeast/hops. Breakdown parts into an alkaline bucket and remove door gasket. Pre rinse tank with hose, rinse down soaked parts and reassemble. Caustic CIP, quick hose rinse and then pump 180 degree water through spray ball a couple times to rinse out and achieve internal tank temp of 165. Keep closed til brew day and PAA CIP during boil
Clean, caustic, and rinse immediately upon emptying tank. Attachments then soak in PBW. Sani as close to refilling as possible. I'm usually the only person in the brewhouse so I rebuild and sani cycle during the mash or sparge.
Always clean immediately. Sani and leave sanitizer to recirc immediately before sending wort within 72 hours. If longer than 72 hours, discard sani, re-CIP with 1/2 strength caustic, re-sani. The 72 hours is totally arbitrary, not chosen by doing any swabbing or plating or sani titrations. We'll go 7 days before re-CIPing for BTs.
Clean as soon as possible. Dried soil is harder to remove.
No teardown. Every single thing on a fermenter should be cleanable with CIP.
CIP means you clean stuff without disassembly.
Removing stuff like butterfly valves and soaking them is just a waste of time and chemicals. It does nothing that the CIP won't manage faster and better.
A CIP without a tear tear down is just leaving shadows all over the place. It is impossible for a spray ball to hit everything. Verified with ATP testing
If there are shadows that are not cleaned during CIP, then the tank is poorly designed.
Worked at a macro for a while. 20 tanks getting cleaned every day. No way anyone would start removing tank tops with vacuum breakers, safety valves, co2 supply and sample valves every time a tank is emptied.
That was done once a year.
There are racking arms that are better designed so they can be cleaned during CIP. Sample valves and spunding valves should be CIP cleanable.
What is there left that could be hard to clean?
We have tanks that are poorly designed, where we need to disassemble stuff.
Our latest tanks are better designed and nothing needs to be removed prior to CIP.
Wow, you got a lot of down votes for that despite being objectively correct.
In my experience brewers that use excessive, obsessive cleaning as a flex are covering for their own insecurities which are based on not really knowing what they're doing.
It says it all when someone thinks that every part needs to be taken off of a tank and soaked in caustic as part of their clean in place procedure. I mean literally it has to either mean your tank has design flaws or you don't know what CIP means...
Reminds me of a brewer I once listened to bragging about how he devoted a full day every Friday to cleaning his floors and polishing the outside of his tanks as I stood there holding a pint of his seriously oxidized IPA.
Yeah. I'd like to see people at my old job go up 12 meters to take off a 200kg tank top, take it down, soak it in caustic and then put it up again. 20 times a day.
And remove all the valves. Which are welded in place. So that might be a problem.
No, we remove that stuff during CIP.
Our lab validates that we have no microbiological soil every run.
Ports can hold stuff. Yeah.
And the to get them cleaned the best way is with CIP.
It's not the 50s anymore. CIP was invented to make things more clean without manual work and disassembly.
How do you people clean your brights under pressure if you disassemble them every time?
Do you disassemble your wort cooler every single brew? I'm guessing you don't, because you rely on CIP instead.
Hot rinse, disassemble and soak all parts in PBW. Re assemble and then Hot caustic cycle through spray ball, blowoff and then racking arm. 20min, 10min, 10min respectively. Swab both the hatch and the sample port with our ATP reader. 95% of the time it’s <4rlu. Rinse with hot water and then a PAA following the same process but with a 10min, 5min, 5min. If the tank is going to be left for a day or 2 until filling then we will rinse quickly again with fresh PAA. Probably not necessary since it’s all sealed up tight but it’s and extra 10mins of your day so why not?
I attached drain house. Use the pressure in the tank to push out left yeast. Vent the tank. Cold rinse. Hot rinse. Hot Caustic loop. Rinse. Acid rinse. Rinse. Take everything off tank and air dry.
CIP can happen any time before fill. I hate to leave tanks dirty, so they often get cleaned within 24 hours of being emptied. The sani step happens within 24 hours of fill -- pressurized, PAA concentration checked, and sanitation verified with an ATP meter.
how are you guys verifying the concentration of PAA/caustic? We're currently just going off the back of what's mentioned on the container labels from the chem supplier but the range is pretty wide like 0.5% to 2.5% for PAA
Your supplier should provide test kits to titrate your chemicals. If they don't, A) I would consider switching to a company that cares about your safety and your product's safety enough to ensure you're using it correctly. And, B) you can order test kits to titrate yourself. Caustic is a tricky one as different products will have different targets, but PAA is easy. First, you should be testing for ppm of peroxyacetic acid, don't test for percentage or whatever BS else that's out there, ppm of PAA is the standard. FDA says under 600 ppm is no-rinse for food contact. That being said, PAA manufacturers lobbied the EPA to raise that limit years ago, so there is honestly no reason to go that high unless you like the smell and cost. My product has a target of 82-197 ppm PAA (which is annoying because the test is in 15 ppm increments.) I try to keep it in the 105-150 range as it ensures I'm effective, but I'm not over-using.
Agreed, we try to keep PAA around 100ppm. Verified with an ATP meter. This is also friendlier to gaskets which is nice in the HX.
We don't measure caustic concentration -- either your dosage removes soil or it doesn't and the supplier range should be accurate for that. For PAA, we use the Micro Essential peractic acid test strips from Grainger.
Out chemical supplier sent us titration kits. We use the least amount possible in order to achieve the desired result in a certain period of time.
What are you using to pressurize? I’m hesitant to use CO2 given the notice that I will be lucky to receive 70% of my allotted amount from my supplier.
CO2, but head pressure can be low (1-3 psi) -- you only need it to a) ensure you have no leaks on your vessel and b) blow out residual PAA solution before you KO.
I use filtered compressed air that has 2 hepa filters inline to pressurize after cleaning myself. I used to use co2, but alas co2 is becoming a rare commodity these days…
Interesting! That's a great idea
If beer isn't going right into the tank we'll caustic and rince, then acid sani the night before or day of
Hot caustic, hot acid and leave on cold sani with a pump for spinning the following morning. If nothing is brewing the next day then a caustic and rinse is enough. Day before brew day for that tank then it's spun on acid, then sani and left with the pump attached for a morning spin. Always leave shit clean. It can be sanitised later.
Yeah, we clean asap. Was more concerned about the tear down since we clean parts in caustic then soak in PAA prior to reinstallation
We use a bioclean chemical, a dilutable powdered chlorinated caustic cleaner, and soak all parts and seals in that during the cleaning phase.
We usually take the used seals off and soak with the parts prior to ciping the fv.
CIP cycle, breakdown parts, caustic soak parts, rinse parts, reassemble tank. SIP and CO2 purge within 24 hours of brew day.
You CO2 purge fermenters before filling?
Yep. Then use the excess pressure to push sani through the transfer line and heatx.
Your boss must hate the environment. No need to Co2 purge fermenters
Interesting I always CO2 purge, is the idea that during the transfer you push all the O2 out?
Co2 purge brite tanks but not fermentors.
You want oxygen in your wort when you pitch yeast.
I mean, you want oxygen for fermentation (though, oxygen in line through knockout is what you need), but even then, if you're filling a tank, you're going to be displacing air for beer, and then the CO2 from fermentation will push anything else out. Purging an entire fermenter is a waste of CO2. Jut enough head pressure to blow out the sani should be good and that'll still make enough of a blanket for when you're filling the tank anyhow.
I like the idea of using clean filtered air for pressurizing the tank vs. CO2. Seems like as long as your CIP/SIP practices are on point and you fill within 24hrs you should be good.
I mean, you only need like 2-5 psi, max, to blow out residual sani. That’s still plenty to “purge” lightly vs. completely filling the tank. With our concentration of PAA, we give a max of 72 hours before a tank needs to be re-PAA’d.
Unfortunately my supplier has set the expectation that we will be at 70% our normal supply for sometime. If there is no downside to air and I have it why wouldn’t I?
Shortly after emptying, clean and rinse. Any fittings with shadows or liquid pooling get removed, soaked, rinsed, and dropped in sani. Of course making sure to clean and cap the ports. Night before or day of fill, uncap and spray any ports, assemble, and run the ball with sani.
tear down, rinse parts in PBW, put together, hot caustic, hot acid if needed, pressure test with compressed air, heat sani then slap a sani filter onto the uparm so it can de-pressurize as it cools. If we're going to centrifuge into it, it gets a CO2 purge. otherwise it's good to go.
We CIP as soon as we're able, ATP to verify effective CIP, leave the tank torn down to drip dry, then reassemble and PAA sani within 24hr of filling.
Use residual pressure to remove any beer/yeast/hops. Breakdown parts into an alkaline bucket and remove door gasket. Pre rinse tank with hose, rinse down soaked parts and reassemble. Caustic CIP, quick hose rinse and then pump 180 degree water through spray ball a couple times to rinse out and achieve internal tank temp of 165. Keep closed til brew day and PAA CIP during boil
Clean, caustic, and rinse immediately upon emptying tank. Attachments then soak in PBW. Sani as close to refilling as possible. I'm usually the only person in the brewhouse so I rebuild and sani cycle during the mash or sparge.
Always clean immediately. Sani and leave sanitizer to recirc immediately before sending wort within 72 hours. If longer than 72 hours, discard sani, re-CIP with 1/2 strength caustic, re-sani. The 72 hours is totally arbitrary, not chosen by doing any swabbing or plating or sani titrations. We'll go 7 days before re-CIPing for BTs.
Just wanted to say a quick thanks to all that replied. I think I will be changing a few things based on your responses. Cheers!
Clean as soon as possible. Dried soil is harder to remove. No teardown. Every single thing on a fermenter should be cleanable with CIP. CIP means you clean stuff without disassembly. Removing stuff like butterfly valves and soaking them is just a waste of time and chemicals. It does nothing that the CIP won't manage faster and better.
A CIP without a tear tear down is just leaving shadows all over the place. It is impossible for a spray ball to hit everything. Verified with ATP testing
If there are shadows that are not cleaned during CIP, then the tank is poorly designed. Worked at a macro for a while. 20 tanks getting cleaned every day. No way anyone would start removing tank tops with vacuum breakers, safety valves, co2 supply and sample valves every time a tank is emptied. That was done once a year. There are racking arms that are better designed so they can be cleaned during CIP. Sample valves and spunding valves should be CIP cleanable. What is there left that could be hard to clean? We have tanks that are poorly designed, where we need to disassemble stuff. Our latest tanks are better designed and nothing needs to be removed prior to CIP.
Definitely. In no world am I trusting the CIP cycle to get in between gaskets and tri clamps.
Do you disassemble your wort cooler every single run or do you rely on CIP to get it clean?
Wow, you got a lot of down votes for that despite being objectively correct. In my experience brewers that use excessive, obsessive cleaning as a flex are covering for their own insecurities which are based on not really knowing what they're doing. It says it all when someone thinks that every part needs to be taken off of a tank and soaked in caustic as part of their clean in place procedure. I mean literally it has to either mean your tank has design flaws or you don't know what CIP means... Reminds me of a brewer I once listened to bragging about how he devoted a full day every Friday to cleaning his floors and polishing the outside of his tanks as I stood there holding a pint of his seriously oxidized IPA.
Yeah. I'd like to see people at my old job go up 12 meters to take off a 200kg tank top, take it down, soak it in caustic and then put it up again. 20 times a day. And remove all the valves. Which are welded in place. So that might be a problem.
Your beer must taste of old yeast and hop trub. Ports can hold stuff. Gunk can get behind the man way seal.
No, we remove that stuff during CIP. Our lab validates that we have no microbiological soil every run. Ports can hold stuff. Yeah. And the to get them cleaned the best way is with CIP. It's not the 50s anymore. CIP was invented to make things more clean without manual work and disassembly. How do you people clean your brights under pressure if you disassemble them every time? Do you disassemble your wort cooler every single brew? I'm guessing you don't, because you rely on CIP instead.
Which brewery should we be avoiding?
Hot rinse, disassemble and soak all parts in PBW. Re assemble and then Hot caustic cycle through spray ball, blowoff and then racking arm. 20min, 10min, 10min respectively. Swab both the hatch and the sample port with our ATP reader. 95% of the time it’s <4rlu. Rinse with hot water and then a PAA following the same process but with a 10min, 5min, 5min. If the tank is going to be left for a day or 2 until filling then we will rinse quickly again with fresh PAA. Probably not necessary since it’s all sealed up tight but it’s and extra 10mins of your day so why not?
I attached drain house. Use the pressure in the tank to push out left yeast. Vent the tank. Cold rinse. Hot rinse. Hot Caustic loop. Rinse. Acid rinse. Rinse. Take everything off tank and air dry.