Maintenance of Beer Equipment

Cleaning and sanitizing all you brew equipment is the one thing you can do to guarantee your beer doesn’t spoil. If you fail to adequately clean and sanitize your equipment, you have a good chance of ruining your beer. Thankfully, cleaning and sanitizing is pretty damn easy. It just takes some attention to detail and a little common-sense and it simply involves soaking, rinsing, or spraying your equipment before it touches the beer.

Tips For Maintaining Beer Brewing Equipment

• Do not use cl-detergent or disinfectant. It should be obvious, but we’ll mention it anyways!

• If you’re not going to use your equipment for a while, make sure you clean the equipment thoroughly. After the water flow is cleared, close the valves. Also, clean the equipment thoroughly before reusing it after a long period of time.

• The heat exchanger should be disassembled and cleaned after long-term operation or if hasn’t been used for a long time. No metal brush is allowed during cleaning, no bending, twisting, trampling and extrusion of heat exchanger plate are allowed. And the aged sealing gasket should be replaced in time.

• Check the electrical motor, pump connection and grounding regularly to ensure correct connection. Check the oil level of reduction motor and hydraulic device. Add lubricant regularly according to the instruction. Check the fastening of stirring and tillage fittings regularly. All pumps used shall not be idled or reversed, and the pump seal shall be replaced in time if leakage is found.

• Check regularly whether there are foreign matters and impurities in the hopper of the grinder, check whether the fasteners of the grinder are loose, the tightness of the driving belt of the grinder and the reliability of safety protection devices. Clean the grinder roll regularly.

• Check the pressure gauges and safety valve of steam heating equipment regularly, and ensure the steam trap is free; Do not start heating until the specified level is reached. Warning signs shall be hung on the top of steam, wheat juice and other high temperature pipelines and brewhouse equipment during operation to prevent burns.

• When filtering, do not extract wort in high flow and damage the sieve plate! When the equipment is not used, the weight shall not be placed on the screen plate to avoid deformation of the screen plate. Keep all mechanical parts running smoothly during operation.

• Check whether the plate heat exchanger has leakage, leakage and fluid flow at any time, and repair immediately if any.

• Pay attention to the concentration of alkali water in the alkali water tank at any given time. If it is found that the concentration of alkali water is too low or too turbid, it should be replaced in time for washing.

• Check all pipe valves at any time. If leakage is found, repair or replace it immediately.

How Do You Sanitize Your Equipment?

• Cleaning

Cleaning refers to soil, dirt and visible stains. This is the same level as washing crockery and cutlery. Everything you use during a brew should be spotlessly clean and free of dust or grease. Mind when cleaning plastic items that you avoid using hard scouring pads, or anything that might scratch the surface, as those little scratches are an ideal place for microbes to hide.

• Disinfect

Sanitising is the next step up and means reducing any potential sources of microbial spoilage to irrelevant levels. That is, you’re getting rid of what you can’t see, to minimise the chances of anything spoiling your lovely drink. This is an integral part of brewing. This isn’t very difficult at homebrew level – just clean your equipment after it has been used and you can be confident that the sanitising just before the next use will be effective.

• Sterilization Method

There is a third stage, sterilising, which is the elimination of all forms of life on the object. Unless your home brewing set-up is in a hospital clean room and you’re wearing fully sealed gear, the space you brew in won’t be sterile. Given that, sanitising your equipment is the best way to ensure that even at the microbial level there shouldn’t be enough to cause any infection.

How To Maintain A Fermenter?

• If the air inlet pipe and the water outlet pipe joint leaks, when tightening the joint does not solve the problem, the filler should be added or replaced.

• The pressure gauge and safety valve should be checked regularly, and if there is any fault, it should be replaced or repaired in time.

• When cleaning the fermenter, please use a soft brush to scrub, do not scratch with a hard tool to avoid damage to the surface of the fermenter.

• The supporting instrument should be calibrated once a year to ensure normal use.

• Electrical equipment, instruments, sensors and other electrical equipment are strictly prohibited from directly touching water and steam to avoid moisture.

• When the equipment is out of use, it should be cleaned in time to drain the remaining water in the fermentation tank and each pipeline; loosen the fermentation tank cover and hand hole screws to avoid deformation of the sealing ring.

• If the fermentation tank is not used temporarily, it is necessary to empty the fermentation tank and drain the remaining water in the tank and in each pipeline.