I’m having trouble getting residue of my better bottle carboy. I can get most of it off, but I have some stubborn dried on krausen (well braune hefe to be precise). I don’t want to use a brush for fear of srcratching the plastic, and I’ve tired swirling a soft wet cloth around, but it doesn’t shift them.
Any advice?
A nice long oxyclean soak will do the trick every time. I just put in one scoop of oxyclean, fill it up with hot tap water, and let it soak overnight if it’s really caked on. Then rinse it out well with hot water the next day.
Sometimes I use some dishwasher powder to give the oxyclean a little extra kick.
Here’s a technical publication from better-bottle.com
Goes into pretty good detail. Looks like pbw may be your answer.
PBW works great but oxyclean is almost as good and a lot cheaper.
Good point. If oxyclean works as well or better than PBW. The choice is simple.
I use very warm water and PBW. It works very well. If there is stuck on gunk sometimes it has to soak overnight. Usually it just takes a couple of hours and the BB is all clean. I’m sure oxyclean would work very well also as others have suggested.
Good link, Ron. I like the explanations and data.
I often use the full 5.5 gallons of hot (<140F) water to soak the entire interior of the Better Bottle for a few hours.
This softens up the dried trub and makes it easier to remove the bulk of it before using the cleanser.
I come back a few hours later and dump the water (and most of the crud) out. This reduces the soil load for the next step.
I fill the BB about 1/4 to 1/3 full of warm/hot water (<140 F, usually around 125F if it is from the tap), plug the top, and agitate it by rolling it back and forth on its side. It is an effective way to get the gunk off, but soaking it for a couple of hours for the stubborn stuff may be necessary.
I’ve gone back to the fermentation/bottling buckets, though. It is just easier and faster to clean/sanitize and to do transfers. I do wonder though if the bucket’s HDPE is less than ideal compared to the BB’s PET surface. In a ideal world, I’d love to see the BB material used for a fementation/bottling bucket. That way I can still watch the fermentation process (fun!) and rack more easily (no siphons or racking canes). I just won’t use glass.
Twice I have had something that just won’t come free, even after a hot Oxi bath. In both of those cases, I took an old tube sock, turned it inside out (so the nubby side is on the outside), pulled it over my carboy brush and secured it with a rubber band. Did the trick both times and no scratches.
You can also put a wash cloth in there and swirl it around. Works well for me when I don’t want to wait for an extended soak.
+1
actually oxyclean +TSP Substitute to be precise. ;)
I’ve heard that when combined it’s the equivalent of PBW. Is it really Tri Sodium Phosphate?
In that case, I would imagine there to be a significant cost savings of Oxy+TSP vs PBW.
yes from what I’ve seen, they are chemically the same minus some surfactants. No, its not really Tri Sodium Phosphate - use TSP Substitute - the green box not the red (all manufacturers that I’ve seen follow the same color scheme)
for me, it works as well as PBW.
you must be vigilant with rinsing as it can leave residue, however (hence the addition of some surfactants I guess ?) that said, the one time I had an issue I was somewhat heavy handed with my scoop of cleaner and equally careless with rinsing, so it might have had the same issue if it were really PBW too.