Trench Drain Cleaning Minneapolis & St. Paul
The Minneapolis St. Paul area has always been reasonable awash with beer, but anyone can tell that a serious passion for drinking and brewing craft beer has taken hold of the area. However, with all these brewpubs and microbatch breweries springing up, there is, as always, a need for good drainage.
As with any company that works with a lot of liquid, having good drainage is crucial. In many breweries, they choose the use of trench drains to get it done most efficiently. However, installing good drain systems in your brewery is not enough – you have to maintain them, too.
Issues That Can Build Up in Brewery Trench Drains
If you think you keep a clean work area and thus your trench drains don’t get too dirty, you are probably wrong. It is not always water that gets pushed into the trench drain, and if you don’t have them regularly cleaned, it can become a problem.
Yeast
Yeast is essential in beer-making. It is what turns water and mash into actual beer. However, if you are a brewer and you are pouring the excess slurry down the drains when you are finished with it, you are setting yourself up for major drain problems (and possible legal problems). The issue with yeast is that just because it is done doing its job in the beer doesn’t mean it is done living. The yeast can continue to grow in your trench drain, giving off a funky smell and attracting a number of health code-violating insects to your property.
Fruit Flies
One of the biggest problems that brewery drains face is the potential for fruit flies. Even just a stray scrap from the mash or a little bit of hops gets swept down the drain, it can rot and be the perfect invitation for fruit flies. While fruit flies themselves are relatively easy to get rid of, you want to prevent them from coming back. The only way to do this is to make sure a trench drain remains free and clean of any foreign matter.
Solids
Trench drains are preferred for breweries as they can stretch the whole floor and drain excess moisture relatively quickly.
However, like any drain, when introduced to too many solids, clogs are an eventuality. In breweries, typically the biggest culprit is stray hops getting washed down the drain.
When the hops get wet, they expand slightly and can easily accumulate to stop up a drain. Some brewery trench drains may have a sort of catch type filtration system to prevent these solids from going down the drain and creating deeper clogs. However, when this filter is left unclean, it can have the same effect.
How Are Trench Drains Cleaned
Due to the volume of liquid that breweries see on a regular basis, trench drain cleaning should be a regularly scheduled service.
Cleaning the trench drain is more than just cleaning out any solids that were washed down the drain. A professional trench drain cleaning needs to use the appropriate chemicals to comply with clean water regulations as well as to get the job done.
Even if you aren’t dumping brewing slurry down the drains, yeast will still find its way down there and it needs to be cleaned away properly otherwise it will continue to grow.
If you are a brewer in the Minneapolis St. Paul area with trench or any other sort of floor drain that needs cleaning to keep your business in pristine condition, contact us today.
All businesses benefit from drain cleaning every so often, but those who work in the food – or in this case, beer – service industry have crucial jobs to make sure every aspect of their business is clean.
Let SOS Drain & Sewer come get those drains cleaned out today before it becomes an emergency.
