Beer Forum

I am concerned about a secondary infection issue that seems to be developing in my brewery. I have been trying to isolate the source and believe it is in my chiller. I have a double plate chiller that I run as a two zone chiller, using tap water on one side and glycol on the other. It works very well and I generally run it in a whirlpool loop. But lately I am get nervous about what is inside those little channels. I clean and sanitize, using hot caustic and acid based products from our good friends at 5 Star but I have had some late developing diacetyl in two recent batches, and I am suspecting brett in the chiller. Additionally, I really want to simplify my process and eliminating the cleaning regiment on the chiller would be a really simple step in that direction.

I use my mash tun as my whirlpool vessel. It is a large s/s cylinder with sanitary fittings. Again, I clean and sanitize is before use. I use this vessel for this purpose because my kettle is a curved bottom steam kettle and not effective as a whirlpool. My pump is a S/S lab pump and it too gets cleaned and sanitized, as do the hoses and fittings used on the cold side.

My thought is to ebay the chillers and install an immersion whirlpool set-up.

Thoughts?

Brewpastor wrote:Thoughts?

Yeah, man. Brewer's code when you post that chiller on eBay. Full disclosure!


Mylo

What? No "Buyer Beware"?!

That is part of my problem, I really don't want to pass on my problem to somebody else, especially somebody who does not have the experience to work through any future problem. The last thing I want to do is contribute to somebody stopping brewing!

I imagine I will not sell anything and add it to my ever increasing pile of brewing gear. Who know what use I might find for it down the road!

I don't know too much about the innard of those plate chillers - but aren't they all metal? Couldn't you autoclave it?


Mylo

Yup, a little time in the pressure cooker would kill all my little problems.

Brewpastor wrote:Yup, a little time in the pressure cooker would kill all my little problems.

Go for it. But the immersion whirlpool setup w/ your system sounds like it would be fun too, so give that a go as well!