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Wort/Trub stains under the brewhouse

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  • Wort/Trub stains under the brewhouse

    Hey everyone, I was wondering if anybody out there has any secret techniques of getting some stains off the floor under our brew house. I'm a commercial brewer working on a Krones Combicube system. For the most part the system evacuates weak wort out to a holding vessel and trub from knock out is thrown on the end of the next lautering batch. Depending on the circumstances this stuff can be put to the drain. We regularly scrub floors under our brew house but I've noticed over the years that there are some patches that just won't come off! One area is under the mash tun area and looks like malt/wort colors. I've always used hot caustic in water to scrub it and that has done the trick pretty good. It still is pretty effective but like I said there are areas where I feel the coloring is permanent. I've tried Acid based cleaners, chlorinated caustic, and even straight up caustic with no dilution and none of them made any difference.
    The other area is under our whirpool. Sometimes trub has been dumped to the drain and now I've noticed some greenish/yellow areas under there still won't come off. I'm pretty sure these stains came from IPA's with extract oil added into the boil. Again I've tried acid, caustic, chlorinated caustic and even bleach to no avail. Any suggestions out there?

  • #2
    I don't know if this would work, but try adding some hydrogen peroxide to the caustic immediately before washing the floors with the mix. "Add as little 1 oz. of 34% hydrogen peroxide per gallon of a caustic cleaning solution" (source Birko - see link below). This sort of mixture works well in CIP solutions for cleaning hope oils and debris - but I have never used it for floor (or other external surfaces) cleaning

    dick

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    • #3
      If you have a bare concrete floor, you're likely stuck with it. Your wort and trub are slightly acidic, making for a nice concrete acid stain.
      Timm Turrentine

      Brewerywright,
      Terminal Gravity Brewing,
      Enterprise. Oregon.

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      • #4
        I forgot to mention what kind of floors we have. All of our hot and cold side operations are on argelith tile. I'll give the Hydrogen Peroxide a shot! Birko is our chemical supplier too so that should make it easy! Thanks for the response.

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        • #5
          If you email me i can send you cleaning solutions we use on our Epoxy/Urethane floors. There might be a chemical solution mix in my list that might help. it has helped a few other people like Stone, Deschutes and New Belgium.
          Chris Klein
          Cell 541-510-1080
          Office (503) 769-6823
          WWW.CASCADEFLOORS.COM
          chris@cascadefloors.com

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          • #6
            We have some aggressively textured UCrete under our brewhouse that has proven difficult to keep clean as well. The areas under and around our MLT are especially prone to browning/blackening. One solution we have found is Birko's Shine-A-Line, which we also use through a foam gun on our tank exteriors.

            For difficult spots like our high-grit, stained floors we use a highly concentrated (not straight...more like 50/50 with water) solution of Shine-a-line with a couple drops of dawn dishsoap in a standard spray bottle. We spot treat the area, let it sit 5 minutes, and use a small hand brush with stiff bristles to scrub the area in a circular motion. Let it sit another 5 minutes, scrub again and rinse with hot water. The floor looks nearly like new after this. We have found that a small hand brush is much more effective than a large deck brush. For us, on a 15bbl system, this means that we are crawling around maybe once a month under the brewhouse giving it some love.

            The shine-a-line solution has also been great to clean up our stainless sinks, basins and fixures. Spray it on, let it sit with the foam clinging to the surfaces, give it a quick scrub and rinse it down.

            Cheers,
            Tom

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