Amazing content as always Adam. This reminded me of how I used to handle thing when I started homebrewing, I used to leave things sitting dirty for days and the complain about how hard it was to clean. Nowadays as soon as my FV's are filled, next step is cleaning everything. Also, do you guys disassemble the HE every now and then?
Adam, fantastic video. Tons to learn from this. I have a few questions (sorry in advance as I am a stupid homebrewer), most of them are related to saving water or energy. 1) How come you don't do your initial and final rinses with ordinary cold water instead of HLT water? 2) Why rinse the HE both forwards and backwards prior to hitting it with caustic, since once the caustic is in there, you're running the flow both ways anyway and the majority of the soil should have been out on the first pass? 3) How do you reverse the flow on your system? Is it done with valving, piping changes, or is your pump's flow reversible? My main takeaway from this was the standpipe thing. That is genius. The fellows in my homebrew club who have 10-20 gallons systems with bottom drains could really use such a device. I have a side drain on my system but even then, this has me thinking of ways I could modify it to achieve a similar outcome.
I'm a brewer on a similar sized system who follows a similar procedure so I'll give my version of the answers. 1) Efficacy of rinsing. Sticky wort residue and caustic rinse better with hot water and when you've got an HLT just feet away, it's easy to just use that water for rinsing. Also, your caustic cycle needs to run pretty hot so no point cooling everything down by using city water on the initial rinse just to have to immediately heat it back up during your caustic cycle. That being said, the real reason is just hot water does a better job. 2) Rinsing the HX front and back helps dislodge any chunky stuff that is trapped in the plate channels. Plate style HXs have a ton of relatively small channels that trub and crust can clog up pretty easily, so introducing some aggressive backwards flow during CIP is important to breaking those clogs up. At my brewery we prioritize backflowing the CIP for that purpose, as sometimes you just don't have time to be going forward and backward. As for why backflowing the initial rinse, the caustic has a certain soil load that it can effectively clean before it is spent. In other words, the caustic gets used up when it comes in contact with organic soil and then it is no good. Might as well clear out as much soil as you can before introducing the caustic and wasting it on a chunk of trub stuck in the HX that could've easily been backflowed out with water. Keep in mind that knocking out from kettle to your fermentor takes the better part of an hour and any chunks have been getting pumped deeper into those channels during that time. 3) We reverse flow by hooking a mobile pump cart up to the outlet of our HX. Our simplified process piping looks like this: kettle drain -> butterfly valve -> tee with drain valve to floor -> permanent mount kettle pump -> tee with a connection to whirlpool arm/CIP arm and connection to HX wort in -> HX -> HX wort discharge. We use a yeast brink keg as a caustic reservoir and connect a mobile pump cart to pump caustic backwards into the HX wort discharge. We then connect a hose to that initial floor drain valve on the tee and let that flow back into the yeast brink to complete the loop. Sorry that is so confusing, it's a difficult thing to describe without some sort of visual aid. My system does not have the distribution panel like Adam's, so the methodology is a bit different but the concept is largely the same. I just use hoses between different valves instead of the unions and the wrench.
@@randolphdew4 Your explanation is excellent, I understand what you are saying and it makes sense to do it that way. Thanks for taking the time to write out such a detailed reply to my question!!
@@JohnL9013 Of course, I love getting a chance to talk shop, especially with homebrewers. I started brewing beer on my 3rd floor apartment balcony in college and used the bathtub in a spare bathroom as my temp control, half submerging the carboy in water and tossing some ice in if things were getting too warm. Making beer is making beer, commercial brewers just have different priorities and methods than homebrewers. Feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions or if you're ever in the lowcountry!
From a new commercial brewer of a small town brew pub, these vids are immensely helpful. Thanks and keep them coming. Cheers.
Thanks, will do!
Like Adam in the office, luuuurve Adam in the brewery. More tutorials bro!!
Xoxox
Thanks for the great information. Do you pack your heat exchanger between brew days? if so what is your procedure for that?
Thanks Adam. Great video. Love to see vids like this.
Great video
+1 on that funky kettle rinse music at 10:10.
Amazing content as always Adam. This reminded me of how I used to handle thing when I started homebrewing, I used to leave things sitting dirty for days and the complain about how hard it was to clean. Nowadays as soon as my FV's are filled, next step is cleaning everything.
Also, do you guys disassemble the HE every now and then?
great vid!
Hey Adam, how long would your heat exchange CIP process take?
75-90 min depending on the operator.
Would you recommend that homebrewers should push cleaning solution forward and reverse through their counter flow chillers?
If you have a plate style counterflow chiller, absolutely. If you have the tube-in-tube coil style it's less important but can't hurt.
answering on tonights livestream!
Adam, fantastic video. Tons to learn from this. I have a few questions (sorry in advance as I am a stupid homebrewer), most of them are related to saving water or energy.
1) How come you don't do your initial and final rinses with ordinary cold water instead of HLT water?
2) Why rinse the HE both forwards and backwards prior to hitting it with caustic, since once the caustic is in there, you're running the flow both ways anyway and the majority of the soil should have been out on the first pass?
3) How do you reverse the flow on your system? Is it done with valving, piping changes, or is your pump's flow reversible?
My main takeaway from this was the standpipe thing. That is genius. The fellows in my homebrew club who have 10-20 gallons systems with bottom drains could really use such a device. I have a side drain on my system but even then, this has me thinking of ways I could modify it to achieve a similar outcome.
I'm a brewer on a similar sized system who follows a similar procedure so I'll give my version of the answers.
1) Efficacy of rinsing. Sticky wort residue and caustic rinse better with hot water and when you've got an HLT just feet away, it's easy to just use that water for rinsing. Also, your caustic cycle needs to run pretty hot so no point cooling everything down by using city water on the initial rinse just to have to immediately heat it back up during your caustic cycle. That being said, the real reason is just hot water does a better job.
2) Rinsing the HX front and back helps dislodge any chunky stuff that is trapped in the plate channels. Plate style HXs have a ton of relatively small channels that trub and crust can clog up pretty easily, so introducing some aggressive backwards flow during CIP is important to breaking those clogs up. At my brewery we prioritize backflowing the CIP for that purpose, as sometimes you just don't have time to be going forward and backward. As for why backflowing the initial rinse, the caustic has a certain soil load that it can effectively clean before it is spent. In other words, the caustic gets used up when it comes in contact with organic soil and then it is no good. Might as well clear out as much soil as you can before introducing the caustic and wasting it on a chunk of trub stuck in the HX that could've easily been backflowed out with water. Keep in mind that knocking out from kettle to your fermentor takes the better part of an hour and any chunks have been getting pumped deeper into those channels during that time.
3) We reverse flow by hooking a mobile pump cart up to the outlet of our HX. Our simplified process piping looks like this: kettle drain -> butterfly valve -> tee with drain valve to floor -> permanent mount kettle pump -> tee with a connection to whirlpool arm/CIP arm and connection to HX wort in -> HX -> HX wort discharge. We use a yeast brink keg as a caustic reservoir and connect a mobile pump cart to pump caustic backwards into the HX wort discharge. We then connect a hose to that initial floor drain valve on the tee and let that flow back into the yeast brink to complete the loop. Sorry that is so confusing, it's a difficult thing to describe without some sort of visual aid. My system does not have the distribution panel like Adam's, so the methodology is a bit different but the concept is largely the same. I just use hoses between different valves instead of the unions and the wrench.
@@randolphdew4 Your explanation is excellent, I understand what you are saying and it makes sense to do it that way. Thanks for taking the time to write out such a detailed reply to my question!!
@@JohnL9013 Of course, I love getting a chance to talk shop, especially with homebrewers. I started brewing beer on my 3rd floor apartment balcony in college and used the bathtub in a spare bathroom as my temp control, half submerging the carboy in water and tossing some ice in if things were getting too warm. Making beer is making beer, commercial brewers just have different priorities and methods than homebrewers. Feel free to reach out if you ever have any questions or if you're ever in the lowcountry!
Discussing tonight on the livestream
What brand do you recommend for costic and what's your ratio per gallon thanks man
Discussing this tonight on the livestream
How do you check the PH on the water?
As in the rinse water after cleaning the heat x?