KegLand Questions and Answers

[Half-baked]

@jollster Kegland or Keg king? @KegLand-com-au given how many people are using CIP spray balls is there any chance you will be stocking a no foam cleaner and sanitizer?

The phosphoric acid is no foam sanitiser
https://www.kegland.com.au/pure-phosphoric-acid-96-pure-500ml.html

 

[Grmblz]

The phosphoric acid is no foam sanitiser
https://www.kegland.com.au/pure-phosphoric-acid-96-pure-500ml.html

Yeah good point, but I was wondering if there is anything similar to PBW or sod perc that doesn't foam up as much.

 

[Frothy Boi]

Yeah good point, but I was wondering if there is anything similar to PBW or sod perc that doesn't foam up as much.

Got my spray ball last week and just ran some PBW solution thru it today to clean my cubes and fermenter. no foam at all.

 

[jollster101]

@jollster Kegland or Keg king? @KegLand-com-au given how many people are using CIP spray balls is there any chance you will be stocking a no foam cleaner and sanitizer?

Kegland branded Sodastream cylinders. I have emailed them directly but have yet to get a response.

 

[S.E]

Yeah good point, but I was wondering if there is anything similar to PBW or sod perc that doesn't foam up as much.

Caustic is the usual cleaner of choice for CIP. KL stock it here: https://www.kegland.com.au/stellars...roxide-1kg-35oz-in-bucket-with-10g-scoop.html

 

[Grmblz]

Caustic is the usual cleaner of choice for CIP. KL stock it here: https://www.kegland.com.au/stellars...roxide-1kg-35oz-in-bucket-with-10g-scoop.html

Thanks SE I have that and use it manually I suppose I'm worried about my pump, oh well I'll run it and see what happens.

 

[Grmblz]

Kegland branded Sodastream cylinders. I have emailed them directly but have yet to get a response.

Just that you mentioned both suppliers in your op, with the way things are here please don't confuse the blue team with the red team, the laughing hurts my tummy too much when the ghost accounts and kk fan-boys chime in.

 

[S.E]

Thanks SE I have that and use it manually I suppose I'm worried about my pump, oh well I'll run it and see what happens.

Just be very careful pumping or spraying it. It can burn a tad if you get it on your skin.

 

[Frothy Boi]

for homebrew scale use 0/10 recommend Sodium Hydroxide. it is nasty ****. PBW is effective enough and it won't blind you instantly if you mishandle it.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Got my spray ball last week and just ran some PBW solution thru it today to clean my cubes and fermenter. no foam at all.

Thanks for answering that one for us. As you have already stated the PBW is fine for CIP.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

for homebrew scale use 0/10 recommend Sodium Hydroxide. it is nasty ****. PBW is effective enough and it won't blind you instantly if you mishandle it.

Yeah would tend to agree with this. One of the main reasons why caustic is used on large breweries is because it's the cheapest. Large breweries go through a log of cleaning agents and caustic is pretty much as cheap as it gets. On a small scale where you are only using a teaspoon at a time I don't think you guys really are that concerned about price right. I mean if you compare a teaspoon of Caustic Soda which costs $0.04 and if you compare this to a teaspoon of stellarclean PBW this costs $0.06. so for the extra 2 cents in cost I would not say sodium hydroxide is worth the risk for you home brewers. I don't think that the cleaning performance is significantly better either especially when cold. Cold caustic is really when caustic is far less effective. So to get the real power from caustic you really want to use it hot. Then hot caustic adds another level of complexity and danger to the situation.

It can also be a bit annoying when you have to partly clean by hand. I mean CIP is good to a point but it's often the case that you need to still clean around some of the valves, overhangs and sockets in a tank of a fermenter. If you use caustic you cant exactly just reach in and give these parts a wipe. You either have to wash all the caustic out then clean these parts or have to wear long gloves which get caustic all over them and then you drip caustic around other parts of your shed when you take your hands out.

Also it should be noted that caustic is not very effective for scaling or beer stone and Stellerclean is.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Has anybody had issues with the Kegland Sodastream bottles of late? I purchased two in August and filled them both up with no issues a few weeks after. About an hour after filling one of them and with nobody near it the bottle just exploded (not physically and thereby sending bits of bottle everywhere) but suddenly blowing and all of the gas venting from the small nut on the side. It made an almighty racket whilst it was escaping and I plus everyone else in the room pooped their pants whilst it was doing so.

Then the other day I took the second bottle I purchased out of the SS unit as it wasn't working and I thought maybe it had been used and was empty and a few minutes later this one did the same.

I have only just contacted KegKing as I have been overseas for 3 weeks so am waiting to see the response but thought I would ask if anyone else has experienced something similar. I am somewhat reluctant to refill at this moment in time in case there is a manufacturing issue.

Cheers

Hello Jollster101. It sounds like you have overfilled your gas cylinder. So if you are talking about these cylinders here:
https://www.kegland.com.au/450gram-...illable-gas-cylinder-for-co2-or-nitrogen.html

on the side of the brass valve you will see a small hex nut. Under this hex nut is what we call a "burst disk". If the pressure gets too high you can burst the disk. This is a safety feature installed to the cylinder to prevent the cylinder exploding. The the burst disk blows open it goes with a loud bank followed by a hiss than will probably go for about 60 seconds or something. This is designed to release the pressure in a controlled way. (relatively speaking, far more controlled than the cylinder exploding).

Every year we hear of a hand full of burst disks blowing on not only the Sodastream Cylinders byt also the 6kg cylinders and 2.6kg cylinders. This generally happens for two reasons:

1. The cylinder is overfilled
2. The cylinder gets too hot (ie goes above 40C)
Is it possible that either of these things has happened?

 

[Stoichiometrist]

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.
When cleaning the fermzilla, is it necessary to disassemble the dump valve assembly from the PET container and clean each bit?

 

[jollster101]

Hello Jollster101. It sounds like you have overfilled your gas cylinder. So if you are talking about these cylinders here:
https://www.kegland.com.au/450gram-...illable-gas-cylinder-for-co2-or-nitrogen.html

on the side of the brass valve you will see a small hex nut. Under this hex nut is what we call a "burst disk". If the pressure gets too high you can burst the disk. This is a safety feature installed to the cylinder to prevent the cylinder exploding. The the burst disk blows open it goes with a loud bank followed by a hiss than will probably go for about 60 seconds or something. This is designed to release the pressure in a controlled way. (relatively speaking, far more controlled than the cylinder exploding).

Every year we hear of a hand full of burst disks blowing on not only the Sodastream Cylinders byt also the 6kg cylinders and 2.6kg cylinders. This generally happens for two reasons:

1. The cylinder is overfilled
2. The cylinder gets too hot (ie goes above 40C)
Is it possible that either of these things has happened?

Thanks for the reply. Temperature wouldn't have been the issue as it certainly never got anywhere that would tip it even close to 30C.

In terms of overfilling, I don't know if that happened. What I did was follow the instructional video you guys produced and then filled the bottles via that method. I added gas until there was no further noise coming from either bottle which I assumed meant it was full. Weight wise the bottles were around 1350g once I had filled them........is this overfilled???

Given these cylinders can fill at full speed, which is why I bought them as I was having constant issues with filling the original Sodastream cylinders I have, how do I prevent the potential of overfilling? And what would be the ideal weight to aim for? Oh and am I safe to assume that these cylinders can still be used despite the burst disk having blown?

Cheers

 

[Coalminer]

Normal safe practice for filling CO2 cylinders is by weight. the cylinder sits on a scale and weight is monitored whilst filling
Far better to underfill than overfill.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Thanks for the reply. Temperature wouldn't have been the issue as it certainly never got anywhere that would tip it even close to 30C.

In terms of overfilling, I don't know if that happened. What I did was follow the instructional video you guys produced and then filled the bottles via that method. I added gas until there was no further noise coming from either bottle which I assumed meant it was full. Weight wise the bottles were around 1350g once I had filled them........is this overfilled???

Given these cylinders can fill at full speed, which is why I bought them as I was having constant issues with filling the original Sodastream cylinders I have, how do I prevent the potential of overfilling? And what would be the ideal weight to aim for? Oh and am I safe to assume that these cylinders can still be used despite the burst disk having blown?

Cheers

All of these high pressure cylinders will have some slight variation in weight when manufactured which is why each cylinder is weighed and the tare weight is punched on the side of the cylinder. The tare weight is the raw cylinder weight WITHOUT VALVE. So this weight cannot be used as you can never be 100% sure what the valve weight is. Over the years it's very possible that the valves get changed over and the replacement valve might be different weight to the original valve. For this reason we would generally only fill empty cylinders and then take the weight measurement of the cylinder when empty. We never fill a half full cylinder unless we are 100% sure of empty weight. If you own the cylinder I would write this empty weight on the cylinder so you know that the particular cylinder weights exactly XXX amount for your own reference. Then when you fill the cylinder you know exactly how much you have put into the cylinder.

The next thing you need to be sure of is what that cylinder is designed to hold. Please remember that Sodastream make a couple different cylinder sizes. The sodastream type cylinders that we sell here are designed to hold 450grams:
https://www.kegland.com.au/450gram-...illable-gas-cylinder-for-co2-or-nitrogen.html
But please be aware that other cylinder makes might hold more or less and you should check this if it;s not one of ours.

 

[KegLand-com-au]

Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.
When cleaning the fermzilla, is it necessary to disassemble the dump valve assembly from the PET container and clean each bit?

It's not necessary. You can get some small amount of crud stuck under the cone shaped seal but this seems to clean out quite well with a hose with jet nozzel on the end. I think we have some videos floating around on our Facebook Community Group about this. If you have not joined this group it's now at about 4k members and it's a great source of information and tips like this.

 

[Stoichiometrist]

It's not necessary. You can get some small amount of crud stuck under the cone shaped seal but this seems to clean out quite well with a hose with jet nozzel on the end. I think we have some videos floating around on our Facebook Community Group about this. If you have not joined this group it's now at about 4k members and it's a great source of information and tips like this.

Thanks. Joined already so I’ll take a look.

 

[jollster101]

All of these high pressure cylinders will have some slight variation in weight when manufactured which is why each cylinder is weighed and the tare weight is punched on the side of the cylinder. The tare weight is the raw cylinder weight WITHOUT VALVE. So this weight cannot be used as you can never be 100% sure what the valve weight is. Over the years it's very possible that the valves get changed over and the replacement valve might be different weight to the original valve. For this reason we would generally only fill empty cylinders and then take the weight measurement of the cylinder when empty. We never fill a half full cylinder unless we are 100% sure of empty weight. If you own the cylinder I would write this empty weight on the cylinder so you know that the particular cylinder weights exactly XXX amount for your own reference. Then when you fill the cylinder you know exactly how much you have put into the cylinder.

The next thing you need to be sure of is what that cylinder is designed to hold. Please remember that Sodastream make a couple different cylinder sizes. The sodastream type cylinders that we sell here are designed to hold 450grams:
https://www.kegland.com.au/450gram-...illable-gas-cylinder-for-co2-or-nitrogen.html
But please be aware that other cylinder makes might hold more or less and you should check this if it;s not one of ours.

I purchased the cylinders from you guys in August, they are the exact type from the link you provided and they were empty. All I did was use the sodastream filling adaptor that you also sell: https://www.kegland.com.au/sodastream-cylinder-filling-adapter-filling-station-with-bleed-valve.html and then filled them using one of your 6kg CO2 cylinders that I purchased at the same time as the sodastream cylinder.

When I filled the cylinders I then weighed them (as per advice from various threads on here) and they were around 1345g.

Given they fill at full speed its a bit more of a challenge to be able to slow fill, weigh, continue filling, weight etc to try and ensure that they don't get overfilled.

 

[DaveGillespie]

Any updates on the PET bottle T Piece?