I started a post about my BI18 Brewery Immersion Heater, which rapidly twisted to being about “The Holy Grail of Brewing – Easy Clean Immersion Heaters”, so I shall replicate here in a seperate post, in the hopes of finding more collaborators via serendipity & G##gle’s algorithms.

This is something I have been playing at and toying with for years, which now deserves some serious focus and attention. If we can work together to improve the unfortunate end to the otherwise beautiful brewing day, life will be better, brewers will be happier, hangovers will be shorter, tax will be lower, politicians will be honesterer…..

Sorry, I went off on one then!

Enjoy.

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Here is my friend Alex from the Green Duck Brewery in Sunny Stourbridge using one for a guitar solo. Worry not, it’s not plugged in! Mind you, neither is he.

Having spent a little time with Alex & Nathan brewing, trying to learn as much as I can about the process to be better able to understand & problem solve, two things struck me.

Firstly, banging heavy rock music is a subtly essential part of this process.

Secondly, the worst part of the day is the last part of the process, cleaning that awful grey sludge off the elements, in a process that I think Nathan refered to as “Winking the Elephant” whatever that means?

This involves some serious welly trouser type things, 3M Scotch green scouring pads & wire wool, and an awful lot of elbow grease & swearing. To have that “Turd in the Swimming Pool” of a job hanging over your head all day, somewhat spoils an otherwise pleasurable, if damp, day.

So I have made it my mission, my Holy Grail, to make this better, to remove said turd from the horizon. I’m not clever enuf on my own, so let’s Collaborate. Please call or email me with mad ideas from other areas of industry or applications, share ideas you have tried that failed, & why, or just to tell me how you do the cleaning process. I have spoken to Brewers cleaning with acids, lemon juice, caustics (FFS, NEVER USE CHLORINATED CAUSTIC! Nameless Brewery did, shiny new heater very dead inside a month), but surely the prize for Best in Show thus far, albeit with an expensive DN80 removeable Heater, goes to Nial Fitzgerald at Stone Barrel Brewing in the Emerald Isle for this inspired creation of purest beauty…

My Collaborator In Chief, Dave, and I had visions of shiny stainless steel tubes, munsen ringed to a wall, sold for huge sums of money to that rarest of breeds, the rich & shiny obsessed brewer. And Niall goes and achieves the same easy cleaning with a bit of drain pipe & some gaffer tape! I love it! Basically, the idea is to take the heater out of the vessel, (intermittently or every brew is question 1), soak it overnight in ???, then jetwash/steamclean the bugger off in the morning. Hopefully with nonchalant ease.

My first question to anybody brave enuf to read this far is, what precludes the same thing from being done with a screw in (considerably cheaper) heater such as my BI18 fan favourite, with which this ramble started, way back when?

If it is the faff of disconnecting power, could one of these not be fitted?

The only other idea currently percolating around my head is this…

A heater with elements bent in such a way as to allow flexing for insertion/removal, supplemented by possibly a cleaning block with the correct sized holes to clamp a scouring pad around the 2 legs of the element. To facilitate easier winking 😉

Alex the Guitarist, above, is a willing volunteer & test pilot, but many heads make light work, and I want to build Win-Win relationships with as many folks, particularly brewers, as possible. So, gissa call on 07897 246 779. Cheers, Jamie.

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