Single walled tanks in cold room

[coastbrew]

A question for anyone using single walled brites in their cold room. Are there problems caused by cleaning them in place in the cold room? In particular, I'm wondering about the hot caustic cycle and all of that hot moist air in the cold room. Do you just have a strong high CFM fan to blow that air out? Do you clean them with the door open or closed? Anything else to watch out for when considering this route?

[beerme]

2 issues:
heat from caustic solution will slightly warm up your cooler and cool down the caustic.
moisture in the air from tank rinsing may cause ice buildup on your refrigeration equipment.


you could consult your chemical company and do a cold acid cleaning, and only do hot caustic occasionally. The bonus is you can maintain the co2 atmosphere in the tank and not have to re purge it after cleaning. Take time to read up more on this though to avoid damaging the tank.


Make sure your refrigerator unit has a defrost cycle, or maybe turn it off during cleaning.


Heat transfer from air to tank is not great, so you may have a hard time cooling the beer down in the tank. If you need to can or bottle the beer it may be a problem. If it is just to serve on draught it may be good enough.

[gitchegumee]

Other threads on this topic.....

Search is your friend. IMO, the short answer is don't use hot liquids in cold room. Learn to use acid cleaner under CO2 pressure....

[Starcat]

Here's the deal

Althoug no ideal it can be done. It was done at Moab for many years.
The tenets noted are as thus:
if you are running a DX system you need a pumpdown switch at the FCU and a correctly configured defrost timer.
Same thing with a glycol fan bank, you need to be able to shut it down for intervals.

[coastbrew]

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated!

[NS_Nano]

How big are your tanks? If they're small enough, you could add casters and roll them in and out for cleaning. (Assuming that they aren't hard plumbed.)

[wailingguitar]

I have had to clean tanks in a cold room before, it isn't the best situation, but it isn't horrible either. BIRKO makes a cleaner for use with lower temps than caustic (still warm, but not as hot) called Cell-R-Master. I have used it with great success, it is similar to BIRKO's BRU-R-EZE or 5Star PBW.

[coastbrew]

Our tanks will be 7bbl and yes we have thought about being able to roll them outside - definitely not super hard with our tanks which won't be hard piped. We don't have them yet, and are just in the stages of planning our build out and equipment choices. We are weighing the costs and benefits of going with a larger cold room and serving tanks vs. jacketed tanks outside of a smaller cold room.

From what I can tell these are the main points to consider, please let me know if you think I'm missing something.

Advantages of serving tanks in larger cold room:
-Everyone complains about not having enough cold storage. This arrangement will allow for a larger cold room, which we've already sourced a good one second hand from another brewery that will do the trick.
-Smaller load on glycol system if only cooling our jacketed fermentors
-Cost savings on not going with jacketed brites means we can probably afford an extra serving tank.

Disadvantages:
-Hot caustic cycle/moisture in cold room
-Not having separate temperature controls for different serving tanks
-Using air as mechanism to cool tanks less efficient than jacketed glycol
-I'm still waiting to hear from inspector if we can have a floor drain in our cold room. If we can't I feel like this would be a deal breaker for being a major PITA for cleaning tanks inside of the room.

[cpelz]

I can't add much to this. We've got three 15 bbl. single wall serving tanks in a small cold room behind our tap wall, but they're not in service yet. I need to clean 'em today in fact (before firing up the refrigeration.)

Re: floor drain, we installed a 3 ft. segment of trench drain just outside the cold room door. While not as convenient as having it *in* the cooler, it should do the trick.

Also, and we don't yet have one, I've seen a section of PVC pipe (6"-8") with a threaded cap mounted through the cooler wall low by the sill to pass the transfer hose through and allow the door to stay closed.

[Warrior]

sterox

I'd highly recommend trying Sterox from GW Kent out of Michigan. I have not used it commercially yet but plan on using it in a brewery, I'm working on opening. I soak all my carboys in a solution of it and it cleans up all the fermentation ring and drops it to the bottom of the carboy. It's an alkaline base non chlorine designed to be used in cool water with an oxygen cleaning action. It does wonders on my glass carboys. Here's the catalog listing for it.

http://www.gwkent.com/sterox-cleaning-powder-50-lb-bag.html

[barleyfreak]

I early on started the cold cleaning acid regimen Phillip refers to above. With great success. I started with acid 6 and then later switched to ultra-niter + X-puma from Birko. Both to great success. I have six 7bbl BTs and try to break them down every 1/2 dozen times for a hot non-caustic alkaline/acid cleaning. When I inspect them they are spotless and shiny. If at all possible I try to time the hot break-down cleaning to coincide with our lone closed day so as to not effect the walk-in interior temp because just an increase in 5-10 degrees in there warms some of the lines and starts to create some foaming at the taps. Anyway -- I am sold on the cold cleaning for 90% of the time.

Dave