Why Cleanliness Is an Important Aspect of Every Brewery
If you’re new to the brewing life, you might not realize how much of your time you’ll need to dedicate to cleaning up after yourself. The brewing itself is obviously the most important part, but cleaning up your equipment and your brewing area will definitely be a close second. Keeping your brewing area and all your equipment clean and sanitized is one of the best ways you can help your future self. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can skip cleaning up a few times here and there; you’ll only end up making your life more difficult later.
Why are we making such a big deal about being clean and constantly sanitizing your equipment? There are plenty of reasons why a brewery would want to stick to a consistent cleaning schedule, and they don’t all have to do with just brewing beer. The success of a brewery as a whole can come down to how well it gets cleaned and how seriously the owners take sanitation procedures. We’ll go over why cleanliness is an important aspect of every brewery so you can get a better idea as to why you should take it seriously and how it can help your brewery thrive in the long run.
Protect Your Taste Consistency
When it comes right down to it, the way that your beer tastes after the brewing process is done will either make or break your brewery as a business. So, it stands to reason that you should avoid anything that might negatively affect the taste that you’re going for in your beer. Not cleaning and sanitizing your equipment properly will absolutely affect your future batches in ways that you can’t fully predict.
Often, unclean brewing equipment will lead to sour and terrible-tasting beer. However, even if you get lucky and it doesn’t completely ruin the taste, you might still end up with beer that isn’t consistent with previous batches. Inconsistency in the taste of your beer won’t lead to many repeat drinkers if they can’t trust your level of quality between batches.
Ensure a Healthy Environment for Yeast
We all know that yeast is a living organism, and all living organisms need the right environment in order to survive. A completely cleaned and sanitized tank is one of the best environments for your yeast because there isn’t any foreign substance that could interfere with its process as you start brewing. This is especially important if you use a variety of yeast that you trust. That same yeast might not react the same in an environment with contaminants that are left behind by not cleaning and sanitizing properly. Stay focused on cleanliness and your yeast will have a more reliable reaction each time you use it to brew another batch.
Prevent Contamination and Recalls
Obviously, one of the biggest reasons why cleanliness is an important aspect of every brewery is to protect the people who actually drink your beer. Despite some people still believing that the alcohol in beer will kill any harmful bacteria, this is very much not the case. Your beer can play host to a number of harmful bacteria strains that can do serious bodily harm. These bacteria grow unhindered when you don’t take the time to fully clean out your equipment the way you should. From a business perspective, contaminated beer also equates to a lot of wasted labor, time, and money when you have to recall it for not being safe to drink.
Foster Trust in Your Brand
Think about the last time you ate at a restaurant. It’s unlikely that you considered how serious they take their sanitation while you were eating there. We tend to only notice these things when we see the disastrous aftermaths. If your customers find out that you don’t take cleanliness as serious as you should, that information will spread quickly. No one wants to frequent a brewery when they’ve heard that it doesn’t clean and sanitize its equipment on a regular basis. To keep your good name, you’ll need to act as though the public eye is on you, even when it isn’t. That kind of integrity builds loyalty in your customers as they realize you take these concerns seriously.
Increase Equipment Lifespans
Not cleaning and sanitizing regularly isn’t just a problem for your beer, but it’s also an issue for the equipment itself. Most brewing equipment is composed of materials that aren’t susceptible to degrading because of acidic or unclean conditions. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t still slowly degrade over time. You already spend a lot of money on getting the right equipment; don’t let it go to waste by not taking care of it after you’ve bought it.
Save Money in the Long Run
Just like any business, breweries need to be careful with their costs, especially related to equipment that you’ll use for a long time. If you consider not cleaning and sanitizing as you should, you should also consider what will cost you more long term. While it might take some labor and time to fully clean and sanitize your equipment, it’s overall more cost-effective than trying to brew in unclean conditions and then having to throw out entire batches of beer because they’re contaminated.
Cleaning vs. Sanitizing: What’s the Difference?
To the average person, the words “cleaning” and “sanitizing” could mean the same exact thing. If you work in a brewery, it’s important to know that these words are actually two distinct steps to fully cleaning equipment. Cleaning refers to emptying your equipment of everything you used for the last batch. You clean your equipment by washing away leftover yeast, hops, malt, and other solids that you don’t want in the next batch.
Sanitizing is a more scientific process, as it refers to eliminating leftover microorganisms that can survive a normal wash and still be on your equipment. Sanitizing usually requires chemical cleaners such as hydrogen peroxide and other acids to fully scour your equipment of any microorganisms.
Craftmaster Stainless wants to make sure you have everything you need to keep your brewery sanitary. Our semi-auto keg washers are an excellent addition to any brewery’s cleaning arsenal, as they make the process much faster and a lot more efficient.
