DIY Keg and Carboy Washer

[Matt F]

You don't want the water to pool up inside your carboy. If the opening plugged where it is resting, you may need to lift it a bit so it can drain. When I do carboys I have them mounted on a carboy dryer up off the fittings on my pump.

[daryl]

Tony has a very powerful pump, the flow rate might be putting more solution into the carboy than can drain (with the PVC stand pipe providing some restriction).

Tony - anyway to back off on the flow rate to lower the pooling in the bottom of the carboy?

[mjensen52402]

do you tie a string to the wash cloth to make it easier to get back out?

It's not a big rag. Just turn it upside down and grab a corner. I think I saw this on Brulosophy. Search their tips and tricks section.

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

[tony b]

You don't want the water to pool up inside your carboy. If the opening plugged where it is resting, you may need to lift it a bit so it can drain. When I do carboys I have them mounted on a carboy dryer up off the fittings on my pump.

I'm using my dryer rack to hold the carboy steady while cleaning. There's only like an inch of water above the neck during normal running and it appears to be mostly foam.

Daryl, I'm not sure that there's a way to throttle this pump down. I could try to put an orifice in the discharge pipe, but need to be careful about the back pressure straining the pump motor and if I throttle too far, it could also stop the ball from spinning.

Just hit upon another idea, I could hook up the keg washer outlets and open one of them to bypass some flow back to the bucket. Will have to see if it bypasses too much water - path of least resistance you know!

[daryl]

On my pond pump, I can control the amount of water flow into the pump...it is a partial screening mechanism...you can turn it in one position and the screen allows the maximum amount of water in...as you turn it, some of the screen is blocked, thus restricting the flow. It does not allow complete closure, but can reduce the area of the water input by 50%.

So it cannot block the flow, but gives me some level of control.

Good luck.

[tony b]

An update.

I've had a keg cleaning session with the new washer. It went well, except for the 1st keg. About 3 minutes into the wash cycle, it popped the entire standpipe and rotating ball assembly off the t-connection. Water went all over until I could hit the shutoff switch on the pump (this time the bucket was on the floor above my floor drain, so I didn't take a bath!) After a solid push down to reseat the standpipe, it worked fine after that. I did 3 kegs in this session. Pretty slick. Only feedback to Daryl, the keg lines need to be about 2 inches longer each side. This will give enough slack to allow the keg connections to be more perpendicular to the keg body and handle assembly. It just barely reaches now.

Today I got the opportunity to clean another primary fermentation carboy. I used PBW this time at recommended strength. There was still a fair amount of foaming, but not as much as with the Craft Meister tabs. I had to shut off the pump after about 3 minutes of run time to allow the foam and backed up water to flow back to the bucket. So, after 2, 3 minutes cycles, I pulled the carboy for inspection. 90% of the krausen layer in the top was gone. Another quick 3 minute cycle and it was clean as a whistle. Note: I cleaned the carboy immediately after transferring the beer to the keg, so it was still wet.

[daryl]

Glad to hear that the unit is working out for you.

On the keg lines....that's good to know. On the unit I built over a year ago, my lines are longer....and actually keep getting in the way.

I trimmed them back to what I thought would be a more workable length.

Thanks for posting, it can serve as a reminder for the next go round.