thinking about keg washers

[jamsterson]

Searching for a sort of 'buyers guide' for keg washers for our 10BBL brewery under construction.

Do all washers required air compressor?

Which washers double as filling stations?

What are the differences between manual, semi-auto, and auto?

Which brands lead? Which should be avoided?

Good item to purchase new, or is used fine?

Is this a piece of equipment to splurge or skimp on? For a 10BBL taphouse with limited distro, what sort of budget should we carve out?

Thanks for any advice.

[jebzter]

We have one from PBST, it is a work horse, two washing heads one filling. We have dialed it in to about 2.5 minutes per wash and sani cycle, that will vary depending on water quality and how much beer stone you get in your kegs. Ours do not sit around for a long time empty or full, so we don't find that we need a very lengthy wash cycle. It uses 3 phase power, air, co2 and water. Pretty much all machines are going to use compressed air and CO2, the air actuates all the valves and blows out the kegs, co2 for the purge cycle and pre-pressure. Manual means you do everything, flip valves at the right times, etc. Semi-auto is where you load the kegs and push a button to start. Auto is where the machine loads the keg into the cleaning station, and does everything from there, no user input required. For a 10bbl system, semi-auto is good. Manual is worthless IMO for anything but washing up to 10 kegs a day. Auto is good for larger breweries to keep it at a one person job to clean, sani and fill.

[Jer]

I have a fully manual homemade unit. I can 100% see the value of a semi-auto for a nano/micro setup. Hooking up 2 kegs, hitting GO, and walking away, would allow one to do some paperwork, or weigh some grains, or take a pee.

All need compressed air, whether that's onboard, or from a separate compressor. I myself much prefer a separate unit with air plumbed through the brewery to allow you to use it for other reasons (drying things, blowing out/off dust, blowing lines out). You should have CO2 as well to purge your kegs for storage.

As for brands - no idea here. I've seen 5k -30k for semi auto dual or triple head.

The pricing of the commercial ones can be absurd. There's a lot of promise for the raspberry Pi homemade semi-auto option that would come in for 1/3 the cost. There's a lot of helpful people on here that I'm sure would help you design one that'd be 1-3k ish.

-J.