Clean In Place (CIP) - Yes Please!

[peebee]

You need high strength caustic for CIP.

I CIP my kegs with TFR, oxy is useless with CIP.

"High strength caustic"? Under pressure and "hot" in pipes, with dodgy connectors and rotating sprays? I think people should be taking that post by @hoppyscotty (#16) very seriously!

"Oxy" invokes images of small (<1Kg) containers, for which the term "useless" seems reasonable. It took this recent pandemic for me to appreciate how useful "Oxy" (Sodium Percarbonate) can be ... with no-one supplying poky little amounts of the stuff I was "forced" to purchase a 25Kg sack of the stuff instead (ignoring the warnings it might burn the house down). With so much you get around to trying some of the "industrial" concentrations ...

I wouldn't call it "useless". I'm not sure it's entirely safe! It will strip dried on paint. It will cut through engine grease. It's basically a strong (and hot) solution of hydrogen peroxide which quickly breaks down spitting out destructive free radicles.

I think one of its uses is cleaning concrete driveways. It does have the advantage of completely breaking down into relatively harmless compounds. I'd certainly use it preference to Lye (I like the old name of "lye", it is more insidiously lethal sounding than "sodium hydroxide").

 

[Sadfield]

with dodgy connectors

Perhaps people are referring to a properly set up closed and hands free CIP system. Why the need to insert a ficticious variable to be able to make a point?

 

[LeeH]

Perhaps people are referring to a properly set up closed and hands free CIP system. Why the need to insert a ficticious variable to be able to make a point?

This.

I doubt AB inbev have many dodgy connections in their closed loops tbh.

 

[hoppyscotty]

But we're talking homebrew CIP here...most homebrew setups are a spaghetti mess of hoses with multiple connections and re-connections through the brew day to constantly reconfigure the system. Plenty of opportunities for connections to not be properly made, 0-rings to be pinched and not seal properly, tripping up on hoses and pulling them off barbs etc. Not quite the environment you want caustic flowing around.

 

[Sadfield]

Perhaps by that reasoning we shouldn't be boiling wort either.

 

[LeeH]

Perhaps by that reasoning we shouldn't be boiling wort either.

..pumping it around plate chillers using fittings from Ali Express.

 

[peebee]

I was remembering this "incident" (2018) when I wrote my piece. Hope @Druncan doesn't mind me flagging him up as an example ...

I am normally very careful and cautious with hot fluids, electricity and acid/caustic solutions. But sometimes complacency clouds your common sense. Two days ago I was caustic cleaning a new beer tap font system I had installed. I was using the usual Caustic Soda initial clean using a redundant Ecokeg inner ball as my pressured caustic reservoir as I connected and disconnected different fonts. I had not put jubilee clips on the ball out Sankey S connector and as I checked fluid flow the connector came off spraying CS directly onto my right eyeball. I luckily immediately stuck my head under the bar sink tap and flushed with water. But the damage was done. The caustic soda had dissolved the outer layer of my eye and subsequently caused unbelievable pain.

Two days late my sight has unbelievably recovered fully. It has been painful and I have been so fooking lucky. Island optician and docs were fantastic.

I wear goggles now when using all chemicals. My head has been soundly slapped. luckily I can still see. Learn from my stupidity please,,,,

 

[Sadfield]

I had not put jubilee clips on the ball out

Please refer to previous comment regarding properly set up CIP.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

PBW is basically sodium percarbonate, sodium metasilicate and edta
in approx 75:20:5 split by weight.

Caustic is a very vague term really. Is it anything alkali or something with a pH of more than 10?

I'd have thought gross decontaminate, chemical cleaning and then sanitising are the three steps to making your brew gear fit for purpose.

How you get there can be in several ways. PBW works significantly better at 50 degrees than at 25 degrees. But that's an issue if you have PET fermenters they deform at about 50 degrees.

 

[hoppyscotty]

Perhaps by that reasoning we shouldn't be boiling wort either.

accidents happen...thats my only point. They happen in pro-breweries all the time too as well as throughout industry as a whole, but most accidents happen in the home and home brewers are no less exposed to the risks. Accepting that despite no matter how careful you are accidents are inevitable and only a matter of time, all you can do is de-risk the consequences of the impact of an accident.

Not everybody's homebrew setup are the same....some a rudimentary buckets and vessels with hoses, some are dedicated spaces with miniaturised versions of pro breweries. If you are a bit more serious and have the latter then fair enough, you may be in a better position to utilise the more dangerous and severe cleaning products in a safe way. But if you're moving hoses around, splashing wort and whatever other liquids you're dealing with all around the place, then best to steer clear of the serious skin melting stuff.

 

[Druncan]

Good reminder @peebee. Now have prescription goggles and even a face shield when checking CIP'ing. Gauntlet rubber gloves. PPE is there to protect use or don't at your peril!
I do look like a mad scientist,,, Haahhhhaaahhhhahhahahahahhhhh,,,gibber,, (goes back into the corner)

 

[Sadfield]

a better position to utilise the more dangerous and severe cleaning products in a safe way.

Finally. Welcome aboard. That's what the originally linked product facilitates, CIP spray action with lower pump speed.

 

[MashBag]

Mechanical intervention will certainly speed things up but CIP is pretty standard in industry as due to its low labour requirements and is very quick depending on the solution of the cleaning agent.

Process with pipes and tanks are CIP Food processing equipment such as slices, packing equipment (my industry now) are all hand cleaned (jet washers/pads) due to the nature of them.

Does industry use CIP for the burnt on grot we get on the element?

Interestingly enough because I ferment in kettle, I have found it easier to clean. So is it the extended soak or is it the yest lending a hand?

 

[LeeH]

Does industry use CIP for the burnt on grot we get on the element?

Interestingly enough because I ferment in kettle, I have found it easier to clean. So is it the extended soak or is it the yest lending a hand?

Unsure, I have little working experience in a brewery but something like Antiformin S will clean it easily

I doubt they will get burnt on grot anyway as they will have that low energy to surface area on the elements nothing will burn.

 

[Druncan]

I still use 2% Caustic @ 80*C for 15mins. Used with my Novax 20b (vitex) Pompe and a variety of spray balls all my cleaning is straightforward. Been using this for a number of years and even dismantled it just to check. But it does everything I need. It's now castor mounted on a trolley and has a bouncer filter upstream all on triclamp and a 16Amp waterproof plug.
Job done!

 

[Sadfield]

Interestingly enough because I ferment in kettle, I have found it easier to clean. So is it the extended soak or is it the yest lending a hand?

If it's beer stone (calcium oxalate) forming in the boil and scorching the element, then the later acidity formed during fermentation might be dissolving the mineral part of it. This would make removal of the protein part easier to remove with alkaline cleaners.

 

[Branny]

Does industry use CIP for the burnt on grot we get on the element?

Interestingly enough because I ferment in kettle, I have found it easier to clean. So is it the extended soak or is it the yest lending a hand?

Can't answer the specific but I've used 3 litres of hot water today with 6tbsp of Citric acid. After a 3 hour soak it lifted straight off. An overnight soak in Percarbonate made hardly any impact on it so I'm guessing a CIP using it wouldn't work.

 

[itry]

With my elements. 3kw I take them out of the kettles when their bad. Put them in an old glass fancy spaghetti jar , then fill to just above the element with white vinegar. No idea how it works but I think it's the fancy part of the jar that does all the work and gets off the crud. I've tried it in non fancy jars but it dosnt do any thing.

I also cip cleaned my grainfather with sod percarb and temp. Then proceed to vacuum crush it. Funny day that was.

 

[hoppyscotty]

yes, you need a vent to atmosphere when CIP'ing. I learned that early on when I got my conical fermenter. Luckily realised early enough to avoid an implosion!

I'm always worried about the shadow of things inside the vessel and areas that the CIP spray might not be touching or directly impinging on. In my conical fermenter I fill the vessel to just above the level of all the ports so every small nook and cranny gets a soaking then the CIP spray is just really working on the inside surfaces of the vessel above the cone. This way it avoids having to break down the vessel to individually clean the various attachments like the heating element and thermowell as all those components are submerged.

I did cook wort onto my RIMS tube element once...prober rock hard thick crust of baked on wort...no chance of cleaning off with a scrubber or anything. So a 36hr soak in sodium percarbonate (initially at 60 degrees) got almost all of it off and the residual came off easily with a wipe of a damp cloth and a scrape of the thumbnail for the stubborn bits. If you're in more of a rush then you'd need something more potent than sodium percarbonate.

 

[peebee]

A little story ...

Well, I'm good at "stories", and all this "my solution is better than yours" and "your solution doesn't work for me, I find this works" winds me up to drafting stories, so don't blame me!

I'm currently faced with a problem. It's inaccessible in my counterflow cooler, and the first I knew of it was the cooler was getting less and less efficient. And then "bits" started coming out of the cooler. By accident, I stumbled on an article with this piccie:

That was it! The article was:

Beerstone is not Calcium Oxalate and Calcium Oxalate is not Beerstone

Yeah, "Beerstone", but perhaps not as you know it: It had gone much further than a bit of brown staining on your bucket or boiler ... this stuff came off in flakes. And how is this relevant to what's going on here?

To clear it the best way is to deal with each component in turn: Firstly, the inorganic matrix holding it together, then the organic matter being held together. An acid treatment deals with the inorganic, an alkaline treatment deals with the organic. I've chosen Milkstone remover 'cos it's cheap (30% phosphoric acid base to be used diluted ... £12 for 5L), and I'll immediately follow up with Sodium Percarbonate (20-30g per litre). Both "hot", at about 60°C, recirculating for 30-60 minutes each. Haven't tried it yet!

Despite some of the former posts, I won't soak for hours on end in percarbonate because it's only active (breaking down to very short-lived hydrogen peroxide) for a few hours ... and then it's useless (well, the breakdown products include "washing soda", but I think that requires a bit of elbow grease).


The point I'm making ... It's horses for courses! Pi$$ about with the wrong cleaner and chances are it won't work! You need a suitable cleaner for the job; there is no such thing as a "universal" cleaner.