cleaning growlers

[monkeybrewer]

Hello Forum
I am just beginning local distribution of growlers out of my brew pub and am having a hard time rigging up some sort of cleaning apparatus for when I start getting returned bottles. Does anyone out there have a good system going to efficiently (with one guy) clean growlers. And also for the growlers that have yet to be used, some sort of sanitizing/rinsing apparatus. I really don't want to just fill purged growlers that haven't even been rinsed but can not find a sensible way to do it. Any help would be great.
Cheers

[canyon]

The classic method is to get one of the inverted homebrew bottle nozzles that mount on a standard faucet. The heavier duty brass ones are worth the extra for sure. That is your rinser. Then you need a bottle brush and some good detergent/hot water in one of your sinks and sanitizer of choice in another. For a soiled growler you rinse well, put it in the cleaning solution to soak a little and then use the bottle brush to scrub, dump back into solution sink and then rinse and sanitize. You need to figure out a rack that holds an appropriate amount of growlers upside down to drain post sanitization. Beware of the metal on bottle brushes scraping the lower side of the growlers as it can score the glass to the point of having the bottom break cleanly off(when full of beer of course). :)

[billvelek]

I am just beginning local distribution of growlers out of my brew pub and am having a hard time rigging up some sort of cleaning apparatus for when I start getting returned bottles. ... snipFrankly, as a customer, it would never have occurred to me to take a dirty growler in for a refill. Is it customary for the brewpub/micro to be responsible for cleaning growlers that have been sold to customers? Now, I wouldn't expect a customer to "sanitize" a growler, but neither would I expect one to bring in a stinky growler that has mold, cigarette butts, and hardened grime in it. I realize that when dealing with customers, you often need to bite your tongue and just suck it up, but I would think in those rare instances when some idiot brings in a filthy growler, that it might be appropriate to say something, in a very nice way, like: "This will need to soak for at least an hour or two to get this cleaned up; I'll switch a brand new growler for it this time, just so you won't have to wait or come back." I think that should get the message across.

Anyway, I would think that a quick initial rinse of several seconds on the bottle-rinser, then a quick 'dunk' into a tub of cleaning solution -- forget the brush -- shake it a few times and empty, and then several seconds on the bottle-rinser again -- ought to be enough. No sanitizer; it isn't going to do any good anyway unless you wait for the minimum contact time, but I guess you could build a large "growler tree" and use no-rinse and the customer can just wait a minute longer. Dry it off, fill it, and give it to the customer. I don't think they'll have the beer long enough for any infections to hurt beer that has already fully fermented; if they have it that long, they'll probably have oxidation problems anyway. I mean, they need to be advised that they should drink the brew within a couple of days or it will go bad, like most other stuff in the refrigerator. And if the quality of the beer deteriorates, I think they would recognize it for what it is -- spoilage, rather than badly brewed beer.

Of course, this is a completely uninformed opinion from someone who has purchased beer in clean growlers, but has never operated a brew pub or micro -- but that's my two-cents for what it's worth.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

[Buckley]

One thing I have done that worked great was convert an old cooler. I put a "u" of PVC with fittings for a homebrew pump in it and operated it like a bottle rinser on a line. The PVC had stems that the growlers rested on and sprayed the cleaning/rinse/sani. into the growlers. Also worked great on 22 oz. bottles.

[monkeybrewer]

Thanks for the responses,
So far the PVC setup sounds like what I'm trying for. I'm going to be cleaning a lot of growlers as the stores get their $0.05 returns for my expensive growlers and I do my best to get them back to me. Anything that involves dunking I'm not looking to start doing (I've done it before and even with 4 guys on it is horribly tedious and inefficient). Buckley - what diameter pvc do you use? Would you mind sending a picture. This seems to be getting pretty close to an automated cleaner like I'm looking for.
Thanks again everybody

[SRB]

One thing I have done that worked great was convert an old cooler. I put a "u" of PVC with fittings for a homebrew pump in it and operated it like a bottle rinser on a line. The PVC had stems that the growlers rested on and sprayed the cleaning/rinse/sani. into the growlers. Also worked great on 22 oz. bottles.

cool
:cool:

[Buckley]

I built mine based off of Brewsoda's post a while back. here is a link with pic's.

http://www.probrewer.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=9948&highlight=bottle+rinse

This why I love this forum :) one of the best brewing tools I have. Thanks to everyone that posts here.