Cleaning 3-piece ball valves and racking arm (on conical)

[Kev888]

I'm currently cleaning and sanitising my conical's taps (which are the 3-piece ones from BES) and its racking arm, a fairly regular chore, and a couple of thoughts occurred to me:

1. Is it actually safe to boil the tap's white plastic inserts along with the metal parts?
2. Does everyone else strip, clean and boil their conical's fittings between each use, or is this obsessive?

Cheers,
Kev

[WishboneBrewery]

A thought...
You can't construct the jellyfish floating kettle element can you, someone on here uses a floating lunch box with an element sticking out of the bottom to tweak their Mash liquor in the tun. *Safer way to just hook up your HLT to the FV*
Heat to about 100c and recirculate through racking arm and valve (if your Conical will stand the heat).

The 3-piece Stainless ball-valve on my Gas-fired copper must get pretty hot during the boil, I'd say that boiling the stainless and Nylon of the Ball-Valve would be just fine.
On my copper's Ball-Valve I simply give it a good brushing out, in-situ, after a brew with warm water. Though I suppose if this was on an FV it might have to be a bit more critical. Larger breweries can use a final steam of their Wort Transfer pipework to kill any bugs before wort is transferred to the fermenter.

[Tango Man]

Don't think its obsessive at all and I have found it important from personal experience in ruining a couple of batches of beer. As long as the white parts are PTFE (Teflon) which I thinks is likely it should not be a problem. The one bit you do need to watch out for are the PVC handle covers which are recommended to be taken off. I sanitize mine in a pressure cooker which is even higher temperatures.

[Kev888]

Thanks chaps - thats really helpful. I'm reasonably relaxed about pre-boil stuff but wasn't sure if i was being overly concened about the post-boil stuff.

Sadly my conical is limited to 55c by the manufacturers so heating the whole thing isn't an option, though I can see why that would be excellent if you can do so. I've been concerned about the boiler-to-FV piping and pump too but have a temperature limitation there as well, so I just have to do what I can chemically for the mo and clean the valves separately. Its good to know that the white plastic parts are probably okay to boil with the rest of the valve though, at least thats one more part that can safely be blitzed by boiling... was a bit nervous as I've already discovered that the plastic handle coverings don't like it

That said its probably all relative - for the first time ever my hop filter stuck and floated up yesterday and i ended up having to stick my arm in to sort it out; I suspect whatever i do to the valves it will be better than a quick squirt of starsan on the arm.. it had been an almost perfect brew day until that point too!

Cheers
kev

[Tango Man]

Here's some comments I got in the instructions for my conical fermeter:
Do not use any cleaner or sanitizer containing chlorine such as bleach. Over time, this will pit and erode stainless steel. Any other non-chlorine sanitizer is acceptable to use. Idophore or StarSan both work very well and do not require rinsing.
Scrub the fittings with a nylon brush and detergent, or soak in a solution of hot Powdered Brewery Wash. It is also acceptable to boil fittings and seals to sterilize them, however remove the black vinyl grips from the valve handles and do not boil the grips. If you are not going to immediately use the fermentor, dry the fittings and seals thoroughly, and store them in a new plastic zip-lock bag.

[Kev888]

Thats really useful, many thanks for taking the time to post that - my taps came with no paperwork at all so its good to hear the official line. As it happens then (aside from the plastic grips) it doesn't look like I've been too far off, thankfully.

I've been moving towards a percarbonate-type cleaner and starsan instead of bleach too - my conical is (sadly) only plastic but I've a fair bit of copper and stainless in the setup as a whole. It seems to be working well so far, so I'm pleased to see that they're recomending it even for stainless.

Cheers,
kev