Another use for Sump Pump keg washer
Posted: Wed May 05, 2010 12:27 am
Spring is in the air, the hops are growing like crazy...it can only mean one thing...time to clean the brew rig.
There is a bunch of plumbing in my rig and I wanted a way to get at all the pipes with a continual flow of cleaner to get any gunk out. So I modified my sump pump keg washer to hook up to my brew rig
The output of the keg washer was connected to my boil pot tri-clover (farthest connection on the plumbing loop). I added a coupler to the keg washer so I can easily switch from rig to keg washer
All the valves were opened and i put the bucket over my CFC outlet. Put some PBW in warm water. Primed the pump and turned it on. Worked like a charm. Let it run for 1 hour.
Swapped out the PBW bucket with some hot clean water and flushed 10 gallons of clean water through the system. Just let it drain on my driveway. Added 5 more gal of hot clean water and just let it recirculate for 1 hour. Rig is clean
I am also working on using the same type of system with a very large ice bath to push chilled water threw my CFC and recapture the water from the CFC out and re-chill it. This will help cut down on the amount of water needed to brew.
Here is the "immersion" rig which is 30 feet of 1/2 inch copper. Tested it and no leaks
The chiller will be put in a 30 gal trash can filled with froze reusable ice packs. I have a ton of these from all the surgeries. I will just re-freeze them after each brew
The chiller will then be connected to my keg washer and the out of the chiller will be hooked up to my CFC. The out of the CFC will go back to the keg washer. This way I will only need about 30 gal of water to chill the wort instead of leaving the water running all the time. I hope this will save a bunch of water and get my brew colder.
Still need to test how cold the ice packs will get the water and how much boiling water it can chill before the temperature gets to high (I.e., how much thermal mass the 30 gal ice water will have). Will post pics of the entire setup and data.
Jason
There is a bunch of plumbing in my rig and I wanted a way to get at all the pipes with a continual flow of cleaner to get any gunk out. So I modified my sump pump keg washer to hook up to my brew rig
The output of the keg washer was connected to my boil pot tri-clover (farthest connection on the plumbing loop). I added a coupler to the keg washer so I can easily switch from rig to keg washer
All the valves were opened and i put the bucket over my CFC outlet. Put some PBW in warm water. Primed the pump and turned it on. Worked like a charm. Let it run for 1 hour.
Swapped out the PBW bucket with some hot clean water and flushed 10 gallons of clean water through the system. Just let it drain on my driveway. Added 5 more gal of hot clean water and just let it recirculate for 1 hour. Rig is clean
I am also working on using the same type of system with a very large ice bath to push chilled water threw my CFC and recapture the water from the CFC out and re-chill it. This will help cut down on the amount of water needed to brew.
Here is the "immersion" rig which is 30 feet of 1/2 inch copper. Tested it and no leaks
The chiller will be put in a 30 gal trash can filled with froze reusable ice packs. I have a ton of these from all the surgeries. I will just re-freeze them after each brew
The chiller will then be connected to my keg washer and the out of the chiller will be hooked up to my CFC. The out of the CFC will go back to the keg washer. This way I will only need about 30 gal of water to chill the wort instead of leaving the water running all the time. I hope this will save a bunch of water and get my brew colder.
Still need to test how cold the ice packs will get the water and how much boiling water it can chill before the temperature gets to high (I.e., how much thermal mass the 30 gal ice water will have). Will post pics of the entire setup and data.
Jason