Cleaning down

A beverage plant is the most favorable environment for microbial growth in this estate, and cleaning is the control.

Wet, sugary and warm

Sugar residue in a wet vessel at room temperature is a culture medium, and a beverage operation produces it everywhere: tanks, hoses, fillers, drains, floors.

Which is why cleaning here is not tidying. It is the main preventive control for spoilage and for contamination of the next batch.

Clean then sanitize

Two steps, in order, and neither substitutes for the other.

Clean removes soil, with a detergent suited to the residue. Sugar and juice residue mostly wants an alkaline cleaner; mineral scale wants an acid one.

Sanitize reduces the organisms on an already-clean surface. A sanitizer applied over residue does almost nothing, because the residue protects what is under it.

Then rinse or allow to drain according to the sanitizer, and let things dry.

The parts that get missed

Hoses and tubing, which are the worst offenders: long, dark, wet, and impossible to see inside.

Filler nozzles and valves.

Gaskets and seals, which harbor biofilm in the seating groove.

Taps and sample points.

And drains, which are the reservoir for a plant-wide problem and are almost never in a cleaning schedule.

Between products

Full clean between anything with a strong flavor or color and anything pale and delicate.

Full clean between a live-cultured product and a non-fermented one, in both directions: culture carried into a product intended to be stable is a refermentation waiting to happen.

Sequence the day accordingly, pale before dark and unfermented before fermented, and write the changeover procedure down rather than relying on the person who happens to be doing it.

References