steam vs chemical in keg washer

[oppigards]

Hello,

We plan to buy a new keg washer. Today we have homebuilt kegwasher with only one cleaning step: caustic/chlorine. When buying a new one we have two options, first step hot caustic, second step steam or chem. The chemical desinfectant might be peracetic acid. I would like to know other forum users experience about steam as a desinfection step in keg cleaning.

[Kushal]

I hope some brewers with more experience respond to this post as I am currently looking at a new kegger as well.

Currently we use a PAA solution to sanitize. We also clean with 170*F+ chlorinated Caustic.

As I understand it, the problems with PAA are that it requires a longish contact time to really sanitize. And it's nasty, nasty stuff.

Other chemical options I have looked at include "Oxine" - what IDD recommends, and ozonated water - what wineries use all over the place. This seemed like a nice option as you need no chemicals just h20 and electricity. It sanitizes almost instantly.

We have decided to go with steam though. All the chemicals have problems PAA degrades into acidic acid for example. And steam can really sterilize the keg. Heating it also ensures a kill even if there is biofilm or a bit of gasket or something that got in the keg and does not offer a smooth clean surface to chemically sanitize.

Steam is a big cost up-front though. Our low pressure boiler is already over tasked and not suited to working with the keg lines we are looking at. So we are looking into purchasing a separate "sterile steam generator."

[Alex T]

Hey Guys,

I would go for steam. Steam will get your kegs to ~110degC and sterilise them within seconds. Chemicals will do the job (I am guessing), but there are a lot of intricate parts in a keg in which a nice burst of heat will sterilise nicely.

Think of all of the big keg lines suppliers in the world - KHS, M+F, etc - they all offer steam sterilisation as standard.

Also remember, PAA can taint beer quite easily if not rinsed out or given enough time to degrade - so possibly a dangerous practice to use in your keg cleaner.

Cheers,

Alex

[farmbrewernw]

We use oxine as our sanitizer but if I could afford it I would go with steam, you can really cook the crap out of the beer stone where most of the beer spoilers are.

[Woolsocks]

There's probably no better sanitizer than steam, and assuming it's pure, there's no risk of tainting or oxidizing your beer.

I think you're supposed to use "clean steam" for this application, meaning no boiler chemicals can be used, which means you have to use stainless piping from boiler to application. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Another consideration is whether you maintain your own keg fleet or use someone like Microstar. If the latter, steam would make me feel better about using a keg that might contain stone from its previous uses, since steam can kill the critters hiding in the stone.

[cpelz]

We have a sanitary steam generator for our BMS Bulldog washer/filler (ie H/E w/40 psi steam on one side and a trickle of tap water under back pressure on the other).

When we looked into direct injection I was surprised to learn from our chemical supplier that all our boiler treatment chemicals were already food grade. In any case, with the exception of amines, they're intended to stay in the boiler not carry over in the steam. We were advised by BMS to drop the amine treatment and to use a culinary steam filter before injection.