Beerstone buildup is a common issue for homebrewing using stainless steel kettles like the BrewZilla. This guide explains how to effectively clean beerstone using Bar Keepers Friend, ensuring your brewing equipment stays clean, sanitary and shiny.
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| Beerstone on the base of our BrewZilla unit |
What Is Beerstone?
Beerstone, or aclcium oxate, forms from reactions between water minerals (like calcium and magnesium) and proteins extracted from malted grains when mashing and boiling. As you can see in the photo above, it appears as brown stains on heating elements and can harbor bacteria, risking off-flavours or infections in future brews.
Why Cleaning Matters
We've discovered that beerstone is pretty stubborn to clean off, with the usual sodium percabonate based powdered brewery wash (PBW) proving ineffective at removing it, even with lots of elbow grease and a slightly abrasive sponge.
It's important that beerstone be removed from your brewing equipment as it creates an unsanitary surface that can harbor microorganisms, leading to potential off flavours or an infection in your next batch.
Fear not though as an easy solution is at hand to help remove this unsightly stain from your BrewZilla (or other brewing equipment) - Bar Keepers Friend!
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| Bar Keepers Friend to the rescue! |
Using Bar Keepers Friend to Clean Beerstone
Bar Keepers Friend (BKF) is a cleanser and polisher, designed to be used on stainless steel equipment (along with many other types of materials and surfaces), and in Australia contains citric acid. It's cheap, generally safe to use and available in supermarkets so easy to find.
Here are the steps we use to clean our stainless equipment with Bar Keepers Friend;
- Fill the vessel with a small amount of water, preferably warm or hot.
- Sprinkle some Bar Keepers Friend into the vessel
- Mix the water and Bar Keepers Friend with a soft cloth or sponge
- Begin washing all surfaces with the mixture using a soft cloth or sponge. Apply a bit of pressure to help cut through particularly stubborn spots.
- Rinse well with hot/warm water
We didn't use an abrasive scourer in order to try and minimise scratching, so a little bit of elbow grease was required, but the results are fairly impressive (and satisfying) we think.
The Results
As you can see in the photos below, we're left with a super clean and super shiny surface after performing a clean with Bar Keepers Friend.
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| No more beerstone in sight |
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| Shiny! |
Conclusion
We've now got a nice deep shine back in our stainless steel BrewZilla with our unit now spotless and ready to go for our next brew day! It's also a nice bonus that the citric acid within Bar Keepers Friend can is a good option for passivating stainess steel so every time you clean your stainless with it, you'll be helping to build up that passivation layer again.
Cleaning is definitely not the most fun or glamorous part of home brewing, but it's arguably one of the most important elements, so definitely don't overlook those stubborn stains on the bottom of your BrewZilla (or other brewing kettle)!
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