Acid/detergent only in Premier keg washer?

[CharlosCarlies]

I saw an old thread on this before, but we've been playing around w/ running acid/detergent only on our Premier keg washer and wanted to get some feedback from any others that might be doing the same successfully. Any tips on temperature, cycle time, concentration, etc?

During our tests we've been running 1-2% v/v of Loeffler's nitric/phosphoric blend at ~120F or so w/ Birko's X-Puma and from the few spears we pulled everything looked great; however, I'm of course hesitant to switching over completely for such a critical process. FWIW, we currently are not filtering our beers, so my main concern is whether our dry-hopped and/or protein heavy brands will be possible to clean w/ acid only.

Much thanks in advance for any info!

[Bainbridge]

We've been using an acid detergent from Wesmar called Defy. 1% at 150 degrees. Seems to be working like a treat, and doesn't break down from the CO2. But we do filter most of our beers, though that shouldn't impact beerstone buildup anyway. Plan is to swap back and forth every six months or so, so that anything it's not fully getting rid of might be solved by caustic, and vice versa. And most of the keg fleet gets at least two washings a year. (A few hold aging barleywines and whatnot, or are lost out in some distant account/distributor parallel universe for six months or more.)

[CharlosCarlies]

Thanks for the info. We tried washing some kegs that *should* have had the highest soil load and both still came out spotless. We might continue to play around and pull spears (my cellarman's going to hate me) for now.

With that said, do you know what acid blend yours is specifically? The only reason I ask was that I remember hearing/reading somewhere that nitric acid starts to fume a bit once you get up in the 120+ range. That's really the only reason we haven't tried pushing the temps up more.

Cheers!

[Bainbridge]

Lessee, here's the ol' MSDS sheet. Looks like Phosphoric Acid 20-40%, Hydroxyacetic Acid 5-10%, Sulfamic Acid <2%, Alkylether Hydroxypropyl Sultaine <2% (some kind of wetting agent apparently). So no nitric. It does work fine at lower temperatures too, we use a warm solution of it to scrub places prone to mold, like under our brite tank.

[soia1138]

We use Five Star Acid#6 which is also a detersive acid for co2 environments. It's nitric and phosphoric and we use it at the recommended 140F with great results. Can also be used cold, useful for CIP on BBT's under pressure

[campbell.brian]

The important thing is that you are using a built acid. This can be accomplished with the #6 rather than #5 per Five Star's recommendation, by adding the X-Puma to your Birko Acid per Birko's recommendation, or with any of the LERACID blends. The Loeffler LERACID K-MS 10 (the blend you are using) already contains a detergent package, so the X-Puma is not necessary. The two detergent packages (Loeffler and Birko) may even be incompatible, so I would not recommend doubling up on detergents. The K-MS 10 has been used in acid-only cleaning applications successfully for over 30 years, so if something is not working, call me.

Sincerely,

Brian Campbell

[SeattleBrewer]

First brewery I worked at switched over to a phos/nitric blend with no detergent additive exclusively for their kegs. After over a year we kept pulling spotless spears. Never seen keg interiors that clean either. However I would definitely recommend a detergent agent in the acid just to be sure. That temp was running hot around 160-170 without issue.


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[Dean of Clean]

Washing kegs with acid detergents

We've been using an acid detergent from Wesmar called Defy. 1% at 150 degrees. Seems to be working like a treat, and doesn't break down from the CO2. But we do filter most of our beers, though that shouldn't impact beerstone buildup anyway. Plan is to swap back and forth every six months or so, so that anything it's not fully getting rid of might be solved by caustic, and vice versa. And most of the keg fleet gets at least two washings a year. (A few hold aging barleywines and whatnot, or are lost out in some distant account/distributor parallel universe for six months or more.)

Hello Seattle Brewer, washing kegs with an acid detergent has several advantages, and coupled with some type of alkaline cleaning rotation should be a good program. There have been tests done in other industries, such as the dairy industry, with hydrogen peroxide/phosphoric acid detergents for cold side milk tank and line cleaning that have shown good results. The high protein, butterfat, and matrix of minerals seem to be removed very satisfactory. Obviously the H2O2 functions as an oxidizer and appeared to handle the protein levels, while 145 F water and detergent additives handle fat removal. Some nitric/phosphoric detergents contain a higher ration of nitric acid to phosphoric acid, and gives more oxidizing effect as well as passivation.

[Sean W.]

I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on using an acid/detergent blend to clean sour/Brett kegs. I was under the impression that Brett forms a biofilm that you need to remove with caustic. For the sake of this scenario, we would be using the same keg fleet for clean and sour beers. Thanks for input and sorry to hijack the thread, but it seems related.