Hey All,
I'm currently working at a brewery using a 61 plate single stage Thermaline heat exchanger. It's the first place I've worked where they need to break down the plates after every brew to clean it out properly. For those of you who need to do this, I'm wondering about your experience. Our brewhouse has no filtration or hop dam, and generally we got a lot of hop material stuck in the plate grooves. After every brew we would back flush and water hammer with a hose connected to the tap. On top of solid material we generally had a decent amount of wort left in the unit post-flushing.
We recently purchased an inline strainer from GW Kent to help lower the amount of organic material getting stuck in the plates which we hooked up with a T-manifold at the wort in port. After our last brew, I hooked the heat ex in line for a CIP on our kettle, and pumped full bore for our caustic and acid cycle, again water hammering occasionally. Rinses in between cycles with 165 degree water looked like we were getting clear water through the heat ex. I broke it down today to see how well it worked, and we still had a decent amount of hop and protein material stuck between plates. Not only that, we still had A LOT of wort that dripped out as I disassembled the unit.
I guess I have a few questions. For those of you who do NOT break down your heat ex every time, when you do, do you notice you have a fair amount of material between the plates, and do you still have wort that stays in the unit? In past breweries I've worked at, we would break down the heat ex about once a year just to check it, but we never had issues with infection, we always left it packed with caustic or acid, and would run sani through it prior to knock out. Is this an issue of tightening the screws more or less? I can see how solid material could still get stuck in there, but the fact that wort is still present is puzzling. Are we not tight enough and it seeping to the water exchange side? Or are we too tight where it's creating exit points to the water side? They've been taking it apart every day for the last 3 years, are the gaskets just getting worn and need to be replaced?
I do not want to keeping tearing this thing apart if possible, its a pain in the ass, and my back doesn't like it very much either. I'm also a little surprised how much organic material stays in the unit, its definitely small enough to pass through the grooves, and I would have thought a long caustic cycle would have helped break that down even more, but it's clearly from knock out and not from the CIP cycle, our kettle cleans up pretty well with a spray out after a boil. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
I'm currently working at a brewery using a 61 plate single stage Thermaline heat exchanger. It's the first place I've worked where they need to break down the plates after every brew to clean it out properly. For those of you who need to do this, I'm wondering about your experience. Our brewhouse has no filtration or hop dam, and generally we got a lot of hop material stuck in the plate grooves. After every brew we would back flush and water hammer with a hose connected to the tap. On top of solid material we generally had a decent amount of wort left in the unit post-flushing.
We recently purchased an inline strainer from GW Kent to help lower the amount of organic material getting stuck in the plates which we hooked up with a T-manifold at the wort in port. After our last brew, I hooked the heat ex in line for a CIP on our kettle, and pumped full bore for our caustic and acid cycle, again water hammering occasionally. Rinses in between cycles with 165 degree water looked like we were getting clear water through the heat ex. I broke it down today to see how well it worked, and we still had a decent amount of hop and protein material stuck between plates. Not only that, we still had A LOT of wort that dripped out as I disassembled the unit.
I guess I have a few questions. For those of you who do NOT break down your heat ex every time, when you do, do you notice you have a fair amount of material between the plates, and do you still have wort that stays in the unit? In past breweries I've worked at, we would break down the heat ex about once a year just to check it, but we never had issues with infection, we always left it packed with caustic or acid, and would run sani through it prior to knock out. Is this an issue of tightening the screws more or less? I can see how solid material could still get stuck in there, but the fact that wort is still present is puzzling. Are we not tight enough and it seeping to the water exchange side? Or are we too tight where it's creating exit points to the water side? They've been taking it apart every day for the last 3 years, are the gaskets just getting worn and need to be replaced?
I do not want to keeping tearing this thing apart if possible, its a pain in the ass, and my back doesn't like it very much either. I'm also a little surprised how much organic material stays in the unit, its definitely small enough to pass through the grooves, and I would have thought a long caustic cycle would have helped break that down even more, but it's clearly from knock out and not from the CIP cycle, our kettle cleans up pretty well with a spray out after a boil. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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