JOUBNAL

OF

THE INSTITUTE OF BREWING,

MEETING OF THE LONDON SEOTION HELD AT THE

IMPERIAL HOTEL, RUSSELL SQUARE, W.O., ON
MONDAY, MAROH 13TlI, 1916, AT 8 P.M.

Mr. ARTlIUR R. Lrsc in the Ohair.

In the absence of the Author the following paper was read hy

Mr,' R. E. BERRY I discussion ensuing :-

The Cleansing· of a Brewery.

By S. WILDING OOLE.

I'ERHAI'S I ought to commence by offering an apology lor reading a

paper to you on a subject which has heen instilled into the mind of
every brewer from his youth up, a. the first axiom of successful brewing.
But, and this is a big word, you all lmow that "Familiarity breeds
contempt," and this might perhaps be translated into brewing language
as H Familiarity"'breeds bacteria." As everyone knows, a brewer may
go round his brewery for a yen.r and not notice some small thing of
importance; a friend will walk round once and point it out to him.
So that it is my hope that there may be one or two remark, in this
paper which may be of use to brewers in different breweries, and if, for
this reason, I may offer a little advice it is this-To directors of
breweries: If in trouble, do not discharge your brewer because he is
unable to find it out, but call in outside advice. And to the brewer:
If in trouble, do not he above asking your directors for outside advice,
as from the above cause you may have missed one vital matter which,
if altered, would put thing' right.
The means of cleansing a brewery or brewery plant may vary in
different eases.
To-night I propose to start with the malt room and
VOJ,. XIII.-4. R
218 COLE: THE CLEANSING OF A BREWERY.

end with the trade casks, and suggest methods for keeping the whole
clean.
Malt rooms are always a bugbear, as however careful a brewer may
be, he cannot keep the dust down. These rooms should always have a
good, sound, duatproof floor, and should be kept sealed as far as the
windows and doors are concerned, so that no dust may be conveyed to
other part, of the brewery. The walls should be regularly treated with
whitewash. If the malt is shot from sacks into a hopper, the hopper
should be fitted with a domed cover and a pipe should lead from the
top of the hopper either into the chimney shaft or to a fan and dust
queneher, 50 that all dust caused by shooting malt can be carried away
at once.
Passing to the malt screens, these screens should be absolutely dust-
tight, and the latest makes are so, the dust during screening being
carried away by a pipe and fan to the quencher. The mill room and
screen room should be entirely enclosed, so that no dust can escape into
the brewery. Both screens and mills should be taken apart periodically,
as dust collects in different corners and a mill has been known to heve
been taken apart and found to he full of maggots. Also oil oft.en
leak, from the bearings and with the dust clogs the working parts.
There is no doubt that malt dust is a cause of trouble in many
breweries.
The same applies to screws and elevators for conveying the malt
either to the hopper for grinding or to the grist hopper.
Care should be taken to see that all covers are absolutely dust-tight.
Grist hoppers should be cleaned out and brushed down once a week,
as often the water will splash up from the mashing machine and with
the dust clog round the outlet, when it ,will prevent the proper flow of
grist, and also go sour and bad.
Mashing machines should he cleaned out thoroughly after every brew,
directly after mashing if possible, if not, directly the mash-tun has been
finished with.
There are three kinds of mash-tune in usc, the old wooden tun, the
cast-iron tun and the copper-lined tun. All tuns should be emptied of
the grains as soon as possible after the coppers are made up, as if left
standing, acidity is set up, with evil effects to the tun. Wooden tuns
should he regularly sprayed with either a solution of formaldehyde or
hisulphite of lime.
 COLE: THE CLEANSING OF A. BREWERY. 219

Iron mash-tuns should be mopped round once a fortnight if necessary

with a solution of tannic acid.
Copper mash-tuns should be thoroughly scoured, but not with any
coarse material, as this soon wears the copper. A weak solution of
sulphuric acid is often used where the whole tun is copper and gnn-
metal.
The spend pipes, or regulators, leading from the mash-tun should
be thoroughly flushed out every day, and if it is not possible to take
them down and pass the brush through, the pipes should be filled with
a strong detergent once a week. If removable, they should be taken
down and out into the hot soda bath once a month.
Under-backs should be treated the same as mash-tuns. The walls of
the maah-tun room should be kept thoroughly clean and free from
dust, and once every few months sprayed with a solution of zinc
sulphate.
The copper, or boiling back, should be thoroughly hosed out with
water as soon as possible after the wort has been turned out, so that
the sticky wort may be washed off before it dries. If a fire copper,
the fire course should be thoroughly scoured every morning before use,
and the whole copper scoured all over once a week. There are many
materials for cleaning coppers, but the best method, in my experience,
has been to use a lOoper-cent. solution of sulphuric acid and fine
pumice powder: with this, the copper very soon becomes clean with
very little rubbing. A section of the eopper should be dons at a time;
aud as each section becomes clean, it should be instantly washed down
with water and then mopped at once with a solution of soda. By this
method the life of the copper is prolonged, and it requires the
minimum amount of labour, which is an important item. Hop-backs
should be treated the same as mash-tuns. The false-bottom plates of
both hop-backs and mash-tuns should be periodically placed in a bath
of hot caustic soda, and the slots, or holes, thoroughly cleaned. It is
impossihle to ohtain a good extract with a bad and dirty false bottom.
Wort pumps require special attention from the engineer, and should
be overhauledregularly, as piecesof hop, etc., are at times bound to get
through the hop-back plates.
The rising main to the coolers or wort receivers is often a very
neglected part of the plant, and I have known thds main with an inside
coating of :f-f inch thick, This main should be taken down every
R 2
220 COLE: THE CLEANSING OF A BREWERY.

two months and placed in the caustic soda hath, care being taken that
plenty of hot liquor is pumped through it after every brewing.*
If coolers tbat are not covered are used, care should be taken that
all windows, or louvre boards surrounding them, should be kept
tightly closed, the steam escaping throngh the roof. Coolers or wort
receivers should he treated the same as mash-tuns,
The cleaning of refrigerators is one of the troubles of the brewer,
and although I place before you one or two methods of doing this,
"every brewer must find out the best means of cleaning his special type
of refrigerator. There is one system by means of which the wort
receiver, wort mains to the II friges," and wort mains to tho fermenting
vessels, may all be cleaned at the same time, which is as follows :-
A cast-iron tank is erected commanding the wort reeeiver ; this
vessel is fitted with either a steam coil or injector, and is used as a
dissolving and collecting vessel for caustic soda solution. After the
wort is all down, water is pumped through the whole system, and the
wort receiver, pipes, and II friges ' thoroughly flushed down. After
draining, a solution of caustic soda is made in the above vessel and
boiled. All cocks are left open, and the end of the filling main is
connected to another tank of the same capacity as the above in the
tun room, there being on this connecting main a cock, which is shut.
The boiling caustic soda is then turned on into the wort receiver and
allowed to run throngh the vessel, through the mains, over the
.11 friges," and down into the filling mains; it fills these mains, and a

certain amount remains in the "frig " pans. Care must be taken that
the amount of caustic solution is not in excess of the capacity of the
mains and "frig" pans. It should be understood that during this
procedure the cold water has been turned of!' from the "friges." Tbe
hot caustic soda is allowed to stand in the mains for an hour or two,
and then is run into the receiving tank in the tun room. Tbis canstic
• A good method for keeping the wort mains thoroughly clean, is as follows:-
Directly the brewing is finished a. fairly large quantity of hot liquor is pumped
through the pump and rising main, preferably before the pump and meine have
time to dry. The cause of moat of the dirt in these maine is than they become very
hot when in use, and when the pumpe aee stopped the sticky wort dries vel'S quiokly,
and forms a bard deposit on the inside of the main. .Aftel" the water has been
pumped through, e solution of caustio soda is pumped up; this same ceuebic soda.
being used afterwl1l'ds for the refl'igerators. It is Ye1'Y important that there shall be
no horizontal portions of the rising main, as it is found that these parts do not drain
themselves quickly, and much more deposit is formed than in the vertical portions,
 COLE: TJl:II: CLEANSING OF A BREWERY. 221
soda solution can be used several times by being pumped back into the
top tank, more caustic soda being added to bring it up to strength.
This method may be combined with that for cleaning the pumps and
rising mains. This may seem a dl'astiosystem, and it certainly
shortens the life of the plant, but most brewers know tbat unless
IIfriges " and mains are kept thoroughly clean, trouble is bound to
ensue.
Another method of cleaning refrigerator' is to whitewash them all;
over once a week with hot sad. and lime put on thick. The retained
heat of this mixture seems to loosen the scale, and when the friges II C(

are afterwards cleaned, the ecale comes off with the soda mixture,
Another method is to clean the "friges" with a weak solution of
HOI, and then wash down with soda, If care is taken, the solder does
not suffer, Great care should be taken with the filling mains, and
every brewer should see that when copper mains are joined, a good job
I #M
Bad joint.

Good joint.

has been made of the joint, for if the joint is made badly, the wort
will get up behind the copper, and any amount of flushing will not get
it all out, and then it get, putrid. *
*' This also applies to all caps and unions. Many cnps are made with flat rubber
cloth waehera. This is '" mietcke, IlS the rubber, afiler a time,expandsand bulges.
01'
and the ea-vity behind makes a grand place for the oollectionof all kinds of dirt,

.Also all wort cocks should be kept thoroughlyclean. It is praotically impossible

to keep a sluice valve clean; therefore, all valvesthrough whiohwort poaaes should
222 cor.a: THE CLEANSING OF A DREWERY.

Tho method of cleaning mains is to have all mains and joints made
to stand 30 lb. steam pressure, and, after the mains have been flushed
out, connect the steam a'D one end and blow throngh 11t full blast for
several minutes, then close the other end and leave the steam on for
one hour. But with this method the steam must be first blown
right through the pipes until the heat of the pipes is up to boiling
point. It is of no use whatever turning steam on to a closed
main.
The cleaning of fermenting vessels is a big matter, and, where
wooden tuns are used, a practically impossible one unless they are
lined.
All tuns should be washed directly the beer has been racked,
and no scale should ever be allowed to collect on any tun. Old
wooden tuns should either be copper-lined, or, if this is not possible,
coated with one of the enamels on the market, and, before overy
filling, should be sprayed with a solution of formaldehyde. This
should then be allowed to dry before using, Copper-lined vessels
should he softly scoured, so that, after cleaning, there is a clark brown
oxidised coating left on the vessel. If scoured bright, this means that
millions of very fine knife-edges are presented to the action of the
beer, and in this way copper is taken up by the heel', with a deleterious
effect on the yeast.
Experiments have been carried out lately, in coating the copper
with an enamel, and very much better yeast crops have ensued,
showing that the minutest amount of copper affects the yeast,
Aluminium vessels are in a class by themselves, and are cleaned
from scale by a weak solution of nitric acid. \Vith these vessels it is
always best to follow the instructions of the makers, but on no account
should any alkali be used for this purpose,
There is another type of vessel which is rapidly coming to the fore,
I mean the concrete fermenting tun. This vessel is lined with a
special lining, and is easily cleaned with cold water. But no matter
what vessel it is, scale is bound to form; I believe the makers of this
vessel will advise un acid solution for the removal of the scale.
The attemperators and parachutes may be cleaned in the same way

be of the Illll-wn,y plug-cock kind, and care should be taken to see thu.t solid plugs
nre fitted. The question of fittings is often overlooked when orders are given, but
this ill important.
 oor.s. THE OLEA.c'[SING OF A BREWERY. 223
as the refrigerators, by giving them a coating of hot soda and lime,
and then, after standing, cleaning off with water and pumice,
In many vessels it will be found that the attemperutors are nice and
clean on the top and sides, but that the underside is thick scale, as it
is much easier to clean the top, and the bottom does not show. This
should be seen to and the scale removed.
In cleaning attemperators it depends on the type of fermenting
vessel in use. For instance, in a copper tun, a weak solution of acid
may be used with soda afterwards to neutralise, bnt this must on no
account be used in a wooden vessel. In many vessels it will be found
that the attemperator pipes are attached to the standards with clips.
This is fatal, as it is impossible to clean behind the clips. All
attemperator pipes should be soldered to the standards, and a smooth
wiped surface left, which can be easily cleaned. The parachute tubes
and yeast shutes are often "ery neglected. I have seen .great lump'
of mouldy yeast taken out of these pipes, Care should be taken that
they shall be cleaned at the same time as the vessel,
The racking mains should be taken down after every racking, and
brushed or steamed through, and periodically boiled in the hot caustic
bath.
The walls of the fermenting and refrigerator rooms should claim
the attention of every brewer. The refrigerator room wall, should
be cleaned down every day, and, before starting refrigerating, should
be sprayed with a solution of formaldehyde. The tun room walls
should be cleaned down regularly and sprayed with a solution of
zinc sulphate. The walls of the yeast room should he treated with
formaldehyde the same as the refrigerator room every day, also the
undersides of all yeast backs. The yeast backs, if made of slate,
should be kept free from scale by the use of a detergent of the
hypochlorite group. If these slate backs (and this applies to slate
fermenting veasels) have been allowed to get so thick n coating of
scale on them that a detergent will not remove the same, a blow-lamp
should be used, but, if this drastic measure is adopted, it should be
done by the makers of tbe vessels, as, if care is not taken, the slate
may crack. Great care should always he taken to see that the joiuts
in elate backs are kept in good repair and are flnoh with the inside of
the vessel. One of the places where often little care is taken as
regards cleanliness is cellar walls. These are often covered with
224 COLE: THE CLEANSING OF A BREWERY.

splashing and mould growths. The sporea from thsse growths are
carried in the air to other parts of the brewery, and may cause trouble.
The floors of tun rooms and cellars shonld be kept as dry as
possible; in fact, the whole place should be kept dry, us without
moisture bacteria and wild yeasts cannot grow, and although I know
some'People argue that if the place is kept damp the spores cannot
blow about, in my opinion this is a mistaken idea, as splashinga from
the floors do dry on the walls and vessels, and then the spores are
blown off from these parts.
The floors should be washed down with a solution of oopper sulphate
regularly This will keep the rooms nice and sweet.
The subject of the purification of air for brewery use is too large to
go into now, and I must refer my hearers to a paper I read before the
Institute in 1914.
Oare should be taken w;ith the outside walls of the brewery, and on
no account should dried grains be allowed to collect round the grain
shutes. Ths shutes and walls should be washed down every day, and
the ground outside sprinkled with copper sulphate,
One source of trouble is often the method by which priming and
returns are added to the trade casks. The priming is often run into
open tubs and ladled out in cans through a funnel into the cask. This
cannot be done without spilling the priming on the casks and floors,
I have actually seen a man stand his cau down on the dirty floor
and then pick it up and dip it into the primiug. This method is not
ouly dirty but very wasteful, especially with priming at the present
price. An automatic machine for adding this priming or returns will
keep the priming clean and very soon pay for itself in the saving of
sugar solution.
Oare should be taken to see that all plant used for filling, such as
casks, racking machines, funnels, hOSBS, etc., are kept thoroughly clean,
and this plant should be either filled with caustic or boiled in caustic
once a week.
All filling hoses should be steamed out by blowing a full blast of
steam through them every day, and tho hose left in a bath of
detergent over the week-end. All wooden plant used in the tun room
should be painted when new and dry with one of the carbon enamels.
This, of course, applies to yeast boards made of wood, also the covers
to fermenting vessels.
 COLE: THE CLEANSING OF A BREWERY. 225
Other plant, such as yeast presses and filters, should be kept
thoroughly clean by being cleaned out directly they are finished with.
No plant in the brewery 01 any description should be lelt alter it is
finished with, as while the plant is wet it is easily cleaned, but if lelt,
the beer or yeast dries, and at the same time collects air-borne bact-eria
and wild yeasts, and these soon set up putrefaction, which, when once
dry, is very difficult to remove. Yeast cloths should be cleaned
directly the pre,s is opened, and tbo yeast removed; these cloths
should always be boiled, as, if not, micro-organisms get into the cloth
and are difficult to get out again.
Great care should be taken with all filter pulp. This should be
sterilised always belore use, and it is a good plan to add a little
detergent to the dirty pulp when it is first put into the washer.
With lilter pulp plenty of water should be used, and on no account
should the washer be overloaded, as this is bound to ball the pulp, and
when once the pulp hes become balled it is very difficult to clean,
besides giving bad filtering results.
All grain, spent hop, and rubbish should always be removed 11'Om
the brewery premises as 80011 as possible, and the floor where these
have been lying should be treated with a solution of copper sulphate.
No chaff-cutting should be done on a brewery premises, as very
eerious trouble may ensue from chaff dust getting into the brewery.
II the stables are adjacent to the brewery, an up-to-date chaff-
cutting machine should be used with a dust-extracting apparatus, also
when chaff-cutting is in progress care should be taken that all windows
and doors are kept closed.
A good ca,,,tic hath may be made 01 wood, a good plan being to line
the bottom with old iron false bottom plates, as this prevents the pipes
while being placed in the bath from tearing up the bottom, as the
caustic is found to make the wood soft.
We now come to the knotty question 01 cleaning trade casks, and I
propose to explain to yon a new method invented and patented by
Mr. Conehman, the head engineer of Messrs. Bass, Ratcliff and
Gratton, Ltd. The natmal element that Mr. Couchman has made
use of in his experiments is the scouring action of air and water or a
mixture of these two elements, and it is application of this principle
that has made his work suceessful.
In nearly all cask washers of the nozzle type the water enters first
226 COLE: THE CLEANSING OF A BREWERY.

and steam afterwards, but as the nozzle has to be of a certain size, both
from the reason of strength and the capacity of water and steam flow,
so this same nozzle nearly fills the bung bush aud ouly leaves a narrow
port round it to allow the water in the cask to escape, and it will
generally be found that when the cask is taken off the nozzle after
steaming, there is still water in it which has not escaped. Now this
water collects round the bung-hole and does not allow the steam or
water spray to have proper effect on the very part of the cask which
requires most cleaning, viz., all round the inside of the bung-bole, as it
is here that a hard incrustation of finings and hops colleets, this part
becoming dry before the cask is nearly empty.
Witb ordinary water pressure it is practically impossible to get a
spray of hot water in tbe cask that has any or much force behind it,
and it is tbe water that sprays tbe inside of the cask not the steam.
When steam is not mixed with water it will not issue from a small
orifice any distance in the form of' a jet, but simply fills the cask with
steam for sterilising the same. So in this new method more use is
made of the water jet than of the steam.
Tbe water is injected into the cask through a revolving nozzle of a
new type. T~iB nozzle is not driven round by the issuing water or
steam, but by an internal turbine, thereby obtaining a more direct
action. The ...vater is forced into the cask at about 200 lb. pressure,
the nozzle diameter being kept as email as possible to allow for tbe
rapid efflux of the water from the eask,
In ordinary washing plants, tbe cork hole is left open for the escape
of steam, and this is where the new system differs from any previous.
A tapered hollow plug connected by flexible hose to an air comp,'essor
and receiver is introduced into the cork hole and just pushed in as far
as it will go, and through this plug air at " pressure of about 4 lb. is
passed.
The method of procedure is as follows :-After the hops have been
rinsed ant of the cask, the cask is placed on the nozzle and the tapered
air ping placed in the tap hole. The air and water cocks are now
turned on and ail' is blown into the cask at about 4 lb. pressure, the
water issuing from the nozzle in a complete revolving shee~ at about
200 lb. pressure to the square inch. Now, if it were not for the air
pressure inside the cask, the cask would rapidly fill with water and
cover the nozzle, thereby preventing the jet from working, but the air
 DISCUSSION. 227

pressure entirely prevents this and the water ie forced ant ronnd the
nozzle as qnickly BS it runs down the sides of the cash, and if the cask
is left on as much as a quarter of an hour und taken off directly the
water is turned off it will be found to be entirely empty of water. In
this way the dirt in the cask and ronnd the bung-hole is entirely
removed. A machine of this description has been in use at
Messrs. Bass and Co. for several months and the percentage of casks
that have to be rewashed is very small. There are many other systems
of cleansing casks, but these were dealt with in the very able paper
read nt our last meeting.

DISCUSSION.

The CHAIRMAN said that they wcre indebted to Mr. Cole

for the paper, and to Mr. Berry for readiug it. He could quite
endorse what Mr. Berry had told them, that Mr. Cole had really
intended the paper as something to hang discussion on. He had
given them a great many points to discuss, and it was an exceedingly
wide and open paper.
Mr. H. E. FIELD said that it was very apparent that ",11'. Cole-had
given considerable thought to what was a very important matter in
brewing, namely, the cleanliness of the brewery. Mr. Cole's ideal
was undoubtedly very high. The difficulty which had been passing
through his mind was how it was possible in practice to clean every
vessel the moment it was emptied; if they could, labour would be
saved, and it must occur to every brewer that, however desirable
it was, it was unfortunately not practicable. Mr. Cole had talked
about the necessity of washing out every wort main, and remarked
that he had once known a main that had a very small orifice left. He
(the speaker) had once seen a horizontal section of a 6-inch main
whieh had only a 2-inch orifice left, but he had yet to learn that
any harm was being done by it, as the mass of stuff in it was practi-
cally all carbonieed. Mr. Cole was evidently a great believer in
caustic soda; he thought that if they used caustic sod. here, there,
and everywhere, they were rather apt to become careless in the use
of it, and he always felt that it ought to be used with diseretion,
otherwise it might be dangerous. As to its being a bad practice to
have rubber washers in caps at the end of the mains, he differed;
becausehe did not see why a washer should not be as clean as any other-