Ask Dr. Frankenbrew
8/13/23
Continuing on with serving tanks. There were a lot of questions on the use of a cold room and non-jacketed tanks. I thought it would be good to go a bit deeper into the topic. There are pros and cons I suppose, but in my experience - and that’s what I base all this on - in 30 years it has never been a problem for me.
Question: Could you share your insight on your cleaning and blow down procedures for managing single wall serving tanks in a cold room? I've had friends bring up concerns of the room fogging during CIP, stress on the chiller, venting CO2 in a closed room, and loss of heat to cleaning solutions during a cycle. Any helpful tips to work around these or anything notable you've encountered that I didn't mention? Thanks in advance!
Answer: Firstly, I have a hose with a quick connect that runs to the outside of the building. I do a de-gas of the tank before cleaning. I disconnect the beer gas inlet that goes to the top of the tank (there is a ball valve I can turn off while I do this) and attach the hose that leads to the outside, then open the ball valve and release the pressure.
There is of course still a CO2 environment inside the tank. This will mostly go down the drain when I flush the tank. To flush, I run water through the CIP sprayer at the top of the tank. I attach a hose from the bottom outlet to the drain and rinse the tank with hot water. Before I do that I should add that I place a Tee on the outlet of the pump and put the carbonating stone into that. As I pump water and then cleaner and later sanitizer, this also goes through the stone as well as the tank.
By rinsing with hot water, I am also warming up the metal. Next I add very hot water (140 - 160 F) to the tank and use PBW. Then do a 20 minute CIP. Yes, it will lose temperature during that time, but it is still effective. However, that said, we also have our CIP 3 O, which is a keg cleaner, grant and a CIP tank, so by plugging in the electric element, it can keep the PBW solution hot. Bennet Forgeworks took our designs and made a more professional one they sell.
We live in a dry climate here in western Colorado, so while the windows to the room fog up, it its temporary. The door to the cooler is also slightly open. During the whole process our room goes from about 38 F to maybe 42 F, but quickly cools down again. I haven’t noticed a lot of stress on the refrigeration system. In fact, in Ridgway at the small production facility, the cold room is just cooled with a Coolbot and an air conditioner, and there has been no problem with that either. We are a 7 BBL brewery, so most of the tanks have a decent amount of cold beer in them. Our tank cleaning process from beginning to end is about 45 minutes, and that is not enough time to warm up that beer, so we see no foaming issues at the tap.
When I started brewing commercially in 1993, I didn’t know any better and my brewing friends were doing it this way. So I have also been doing this for all these years. All I can say is it works and is so much easier that dealing with dozens of kegs at 160 pounds a piece.
There is of course detailed instructions on how we do everything at Colorado Boy in our SOP book.
I'll get a picture. It exits to the outside of the building
Very informative article, I was curious if you are a proponent of brewing science courses, I know they can be helpful, but I’ve learned quite a bit from home brewing and I didn’t want to spend money that I didn’t have to. On the other hand, I can also see the benefits that one can obtain from gaining a better understanding of the chemistry involved in the brewing process. Do you think they’re worth it?