We keep having problems with cleaning our heat exchanger. I've pulled it apart several times the past year, only to find trub and grain husks trapped between the plates. We have a Mueller HX with a criss-crossing herringbone pattern. At all of the points of contact between the plates, there always is small pieces of hop particles, trub, and grain husks trapped.
We clean in the reverse direction from normal flow. We've used strong concentrations of PBW or caustic. We clean it for at least 30 minutes after every single brew.
We know it's a problem because we will have the occasional forced wort test come up positive after 5-6 days. But I can't figure out what else to do to get the HX clean and sanitized. We have been sanitizing with either 200 F water for at least 30 minutes, or chlorine dioxide. I'm going to switch to peracetic acid next, after we completely tear down the HX and replace all gaskets. But I'm worried that our cleaning procedure is not working.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get these hop and trub particles out?
We clean in the reverse direction from normal flow. We've used strong concentrations of PBW or caustic. We clean it for at least 30 minutes after every single brew.
We know it's a problem because we will have the occasional forced wort test come up positive after 5-6 days. But I can't figure out what else to do to get the HX clean and sanitized. We have been sanitizing with either 200 F water for at least 30 minutes, or chlorine dioxide. I'm going to switch to peracetic acid next, after we completely tear down the HX and replace all gaskets. But I'm worried that our cleaning procedure is not working.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get these hop and trub particles out?
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