I agree. I built my own and I can fill it with a few gallons of PBW, do 5 kegs, then fill it with rinse water or saniclean and not worry about any crevices. If nothing else it gives me peace of mind with less work since I’d normally be taking off the posts and using a brush.
I have the ssbrewtech keg washer and like it. No issues. Less water, don’t have to break it down. It is expensive though.
In looking at the specs, it seems the bucket they provide is about 11 3/4 inches in diameter, while the fermenter bucket I got from Northern Brewery is about 12 inches. Bummer, but I might get it for the keg washing part of it and try and do something to get it to work on my buckets.
Just ordered now. Will see how it works. I like the idea of not breaking down a keg every time I clean them.
Thanks for all the feedback.
I just ordered one as well. I’ll post my impressions once I receive it and clean a bunch of kegs.
I cannot wait to see what you all say about this. I think it is a cool idea that will save me a ton of water. And in the San Francisco bay area, that is going to save me money as well.
I am a fan of SS Brewtech gear. I have their 10-gallon TC kettle and a 7-gallon Brew Bucket. I also own a Delta Brewing Systems (DBS) 6.6-gallon kettle and their 4-gallon version of a brew bucket. There is no comparison in build quality between the two. The DBS gear is good, but the SS Brewtech gear is better.
To be clear, my keg washer is homemade - a bucket with a pump tied to a manifold leading to a spray mast and separate QDC’s for both keg posts. It works great so far (5-6 years).
A 5 lb container of craft meister alkaline brew wash cost $33. With a $10 pump and a few fittings, you can make that last 4-5x longer. Cost of water is irrelevant, the cleaner is what gets you.
There is no way that I could justify such an expensive toy. A 4.5lb box of Savogran TSP (the real stuff, not sodium metasilicate passed off as TSP) costs around $11.00 at Home Depot. A rounded teaspoon in a 5-gallon soak will leave even filthy kegs spotless. There is no need to disassemble a keg when it clean it. All one needs to do is add cleaner, fill the keg completely to the top, push down on the liquid poppet until liquid comes out of it, and let it soak. I have always used picnic faucets in a standard fridge, so I seal a keg, add a picnic faucet, and run cleaner through the picnic faucet before removing the lid and topping off the keg with hot water.
I am curious as to how people who are so water conscious chill their wort? For me, chilling is the largest single use of water in brewing. I used a minimum of 10-gallons when chilling only 3.5 gallons and that is with the first five gallons running into a white bucket for cleaning and the second five gallons recirculating with ice.
Plate chiller. 15-25 gallon batches. Water is cheap and abundant where I live and I honestly don’t give it a second thought about running the effluent down the drain.
I do much the same as you: save the hot water in the sink for cleaning and save the rest of the water in buckets for watering the garden. It uses water but it doesn’t waste water. Very little goes down the drain.
I saw a really cool setup where the guy put hose fittings on the end of the chiller, ran the hose into a cooler and hooked it up to a pump. that way the water recirculated and was not wasted. That is going to be my next project once I get this keg washer worked out. I am thinking I can use the same pump.
Do you happen to have a parts list or a write up on what you did? I have found many on youtube, but just collecting info and seeing what is the best. Thanks.
I have a pool and a hot tub. These need frequent topping off. I run the outlet water from my IC into one or both of them.
Post some pics when you put it together!
Update:Received the keg washer late yesterday so I couldn’t wait to come home today and try it out. Assembly was a snap and self explanatory although it did arrive with 2 threaded 12" pipes but without a threaded coupling to join the two together. For my use of cleaning corny kegs and an occasional carboy one is sufficient.
I cleaned 3 kegs using 3 gallons of water with 3 Tbs of Onestep cleaner and cycled for 15 minutes each. Maybe overkill on time, IDK. Disassembled the fittings to examine and they were clean. No less clean had I soaked them in cleaner. Dip tube upon inspection with a light was sufficiently clean too.
Overall I am pleased with how it worked and for the money, a decent buy.
Which did you buy?
The bucket blaster from Williams Brewing.
I agree with Denny here.
FWIW, I clean mine the old fashioned way. A caustic type cleaner, like PBW, Craftmeister, or a bulk milk tank cleaner that is cheaper to buy, a gallon of two of hot water, and a keg brush. I can clean a keg in about five minutes, including removing and cleaning the dip tubes and keg plugs. I then rinse them with hot water, reassemble them, pressurize them with CO2 and set them aside until it is time to sanitize and fill them (pressurizing them will tell me if I have any leaks when I go to use them). I get them clean and don’t have to fork out money for a keg washer that I don’t have room to store in my small brewery. It works fine for me.