⇒ 'PBW cleaner' (and why you should use it)

PBW cleans beer equipment very well

PBW stands for Powdered Brewery Wash

PBW cleaning product by Five Star is widely used in commercial breweries but countless homebrewers across the country have cottoned on to how they can use it for cleaning their own brewing equipment.

It was originally used by the Coors brewery!

PBW is a trusted brand among most North American homebrewing communities.

If you are looking for some guidance on how to clean your brewing equipment, they will probably recommend you use this powdered wash.

It really is an amazing cleaner for beer brewing equipment.


Don't believe me and you think I'll say anything to make a sale?

Go to any beer brewing forum and you will find season beer makers raving about this product. Go on, Google it now and you'll quickly find we are not exaggerating about how good this cleaning product is.

The benefits of using PBW are many:

• If you've ever used a 5-gallon stainless steel boil pot after homebrewing sessions you'll know how crusty the remnants on the bottom of the pot can be. A quick round with PBW will sort them out easily. All you have to do when cleaning with hot water, add just a little bit of PBW, mix it up, and let it sit in the pot. All of that burned-on garbage comes right off. Ideally, a good burner will not cause this problem!
• Stainless steel never looked so clean after an overnight soak!
• PBW is environmentally friendly, biodegradable, and will not harm septic systems
• You can also clean your dishwasher with it! In fact, you can clean any stainless steel utensils and equipment with it - that's why it's so versatile as a cleaner for home brewers
• If you need to remove an odor that is coming from some organic substance PBW will remove the substance and the accompanying odour. So it's great for cleaning up old brewing equipment that might need a bit of love before it's used again
• Doesn't burn skin as other chemical agents can (like say Sodium Hydroxide) or create a strong pungent smell like other heavy-duty cleaners
• It's pretty handy to remove labels from beer bottles after a good soak.

But wait, that's not all!

PBW has plenty of uses that might not seem so obvious for home brewing

Say you've been a little bit lazy and you still need to clean your beer bottles and the sediment has dried out at the bottom of the bottle.

Have you ever tried getting that crap out?

It's a real bitch to do, trust me. 

Why waste time with a bottle brush that just can't reach everywhere when you can soak all your bottles in Powdered Brewery Wash.

It's also handy for removing pesky labels from beer bottles that you want to use for homebrew. Give them a good soak and those labels will come off in no time. 

You can also clean your carboy or fermentor too! And we all know how easy is to think, heck, I've bottled my beer, I'll clean the fermenter next weekend...

That weekend becomes a month and suddenly all the brewing scum is as impenetrable as Fort Knox.

A soak with PBW will sort that for you.

If you let that fermenter soak overnight in the solution, you won't need to do any scrubbing, simply rinse it off with the hose and you'll be sweet. 

It's really easy to use PBW! 

The cleaner instructions are simple. It's just three easy steps:

1. It's best used to soak your brewing gear overnight to easily remove stubborn, caked on organic deposits without scrubbing.
2. Use 1 - 2 ounces per gallon for cleaning boil kettles, or an ounce per gallon for fermenters, kegs, carboys and other brewing equipment. 
3. A quick rinse in the morning and you are ready to get brewing again!

So what do other users say about this cleaning agent?

The average review for PBW by Amazon reviewers is 5 out of 5. That's 100 percent of reviewers believing this cleaning agent does the business, and that's what you want. You don't want to muck around, you just want clean and sanitized beer equipment!

Powdered Brewery Wash is not a sanitizer!

Let's get this super clear.

PBW is for washing and cleaning your brewing equipment.

It will not necessarily kill the bugs that might linger, for which you need a good santizer.

Before brewing, and after ensuring you have clean gear, you must sterilize the fermenter and any gear you are using including any spoons, funnels or other utensils. 

Many home brewers often use Star San. Like PBW, Star San is highly rated in the home brewing beer community as a sanitization agent. A great thing about is that it is a no rinse agent. You spray or briefly soak your gear with it and you are good to go. Star San is very well priced on Amazon.

What are the active ingredients found in PBW?

The main ingredient is about 30% Sodium Metasilicate. Its chemical formula is Na2SiO3 and it's what kicks grease and beer smegma to the curb. If you want to be brave and buy the main ingredient in bulk, there's plenty of value on offer on Amazon.

Another key component is sodium percarbonate. Don't get confused with sodium bicarbonate which is used for things like baking and cleaning! The percarbonate is a really excellent cleaner of beer gear, and we use it often. 

Want to know a secret about percarbonate?

It's laundry soaker.

That's right, the powder you use to get your whites whiter and brights brighter is sodium percarbonate!

So if you want a cheaper substitute for PBW, you could use the second active ingredient in it and simply go into your laundry and grab the soak.

Napisan, Oxiclean and many of those common and generic household brands have percarbonate in them.

To be fair though, the percarbonate is probably best for sanitizing whereas the metasilicate is the stronger cleaner.

Combining them meanings you get the effect of PBW - so if you are looking to make a DIY PBW substitute cleaner then use this combo of TSP/90 (AKA Red Devil) and Oxyclean in a ratio of 30% TSP/90 and 70% Oxiclean.

PBW is great for soaking kettles and pots

Did you forget to clean out the trub from your brewing kettle?

Maybe you got a bit carried away on the sampling of your wares... if the trub is now rock hard and caked on, a bit of PBW in water will work magic on the kettle.

Let it have a good soak, maybe read some Obi-Wan Kenobi Star Wars quotes and you should then be able to remove the gunk very easily. A hose can work wonders here.

If you've been a bit negligent with your kettle cleaning duty, PBW will deal with any beerstone that's occurring inside the drum. If you don't know what beerstone is, it's the build-up of calcium oxalate and water salt.

This build-up can affect the performance of your kettle over time, so if it's any every so often soak with PBW, you'll be maintaining your kettle.

A note on beerstone, other acid-based products arguably can do a better job.

Other uses for Five Star PBW

You can use it to clean your dishwasher or washing machine. Give it a round with nothing in it and a hot wash. You'll clear out the grime and get rid of some funky smells.

Given it cuts through grease extremely well, you can use a solution on a rag to clean all the surfaces in your kitchen > stove tops, fridges etc.

Barkeeper's Friend is probably better placed as a cleaner though. 

So, I'm convinced, where can I buy this wonder cleaner?

It's very reasonably priced on Amazon!

Here's an interesting question - does a acid sanitizer like Star San kill Covid 19?

2 comments beerstone, cleaning your equipment, five star, PBW, powdered brewing wash, sodium metasilicate, star san

↣ What is beerstone (and how to remove it)?

Beerstone is a silent but deadly beer gear killer

It creeps in slowly, like a silent assassin and you might not discover their presence until its too late...

Beerstone

The scourge of brewing kettles and kegs everywhere, beerstone can be a key element in causing off beer.

What is it?

Beerstone is a kind of scale known as 'calcium oxalate' (C2CaO4) in the brewing industry. 

This precipitate is largely due to a reaction between alkaline cleaners (e.g. caustic soda), hard water minerals (think calcium and magnesium) and protein in the form of amino acids.

It affects both the home brewer and commercial operations. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly once you've learned about the science, the milk industry has similar problems with buildup on milking machinery and milk vans.

That industry calls it, yes you guessed it, milkstone!

How does beerstone ruin beer?

The development of beerstone leaves an unsanitary surface on the keg or kettle or other brewing equipment that offers an environment that can harbour microorganisms. 

At it's most minor interference with the beer, beerstone can cause those classic "off flavors" or even shorten the shelf life of your batch.

In the worst case scenario, unwanted micro-organisms can wreck an entire batch of beer which is a waste of good beer, a waste of money and a loss of your precious brewing time.

How does beerstone form?

The organic compounds found in the wort and beer will combine with metals in the water - usually calcium and magnesium for the oxalate. It is a white, crystalline precipitate - which makes its initial appearance hard to detect with the naked eye. 

Beer bugs will then find a home in the calcium oxalate - and here's the kicker - this environment allows the microorganisms to avoid contact with your cleaning regime and, believe it or not, sodium hydroxide (NaOH) can then help form a cover by creating additional precipitate because the caustic agents react with the CO2 (given off by the fermentation process).

It's almost like you can't win!

So how do you remove beerstone?

The pros at Birkocorp have offered a pretty handy 5 step method for removing beerstone build up:

1. Rinse out beer and yeast with ambient temperature water.
2. Use a 1-2 ounce per gallon phosphoric/nitric acid mixture (140°F maximum temperature) for 15-30 minutes.
3. Do not rinse the solution out.
4. Use a noncaustic alkaline cleaner at 1-2 ounces per gallon of warm (120-140°F) to start. CIP for 15-30 minutes depending on conditions.
5. Rinse with ambient temperature water until the pH of the rinse water is neutral (same pH as the tap water coming in).

If it's not clear, you'll need to fire up up your gas burner to get the solutions to the correct temperature.

Any residual 'soil' adhered to the metal can be removed with a high-pressure hot water rinse or simply wiped off as it should now be quite soft. If you need to do a scrub, use a sponge or scrubber that will not scour the metal. 

The entire method should be followed. This is because the acid mixture does not remove the stone, it softens up the scaling so that the alkaline cleaner has the chance to do its magic. 

Beerstone Prevention is beer than cure

If it's so easy for brewers to not notice that beerstone is 'scaling up' how can it be prevented from occurring?

The key is to mix up your cleaning method by using strong acid solutions are the quickest and most effective way to remove beerstone from stainless steel surfaces. Hydrochloric acid is a popular choice but you should not use it every time as it could cause pitting.

When using strong acids, be wary of their corrosiveness on metal.

Brewclean is a product that can help prevent the buildup of brewstone. Specifically designed for cleaning homebrew kegs and brewing equipment, it is non-corrosive so it will not cause rust on kegs or other homebrew equipment.

The wetting agent (surfactant) helps remove beerstone and other 'soils'. It's a good alternative to using sodium hydroxide.

You should be quite careful when using these kinds of acids and alkaline solutions as they are pretty potent and can do some real damage if you come into contact with them.

 A splash of chemical cleaner in the eye is pretty damaging and painful, trust me I learned this lesson some years ago and it cost me a trip to the hospital!

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