Butterfly versus Ball Valves
Anyone @HBT have experience with butterfly valves? Are they Clean-In
Place (CIP)? Unlike ball valves which need to be disassembled to really
clean the gunk out. We're not really concerned about high pressures, so
ball valve ratings aren't really beneficial. I do know (from another
thread) that a ball valve is better for controlling flow and that makes
sense.Only butterfly and diaphragm valves are considered sanitary and can be
CIP. Ball valves are fine on the process side but butterfly should be
used exclusively on the cold side. Of course we're talking about
homebrew so a ball valve on the cold side isn't the end of the worldI agree with the above that a butterfly valve would be the better choice
regarding sanitation and CIP concerns, but OTOH I have been using ball
valves in my system for a very long time without problems and none of
them are the three piece design. IIRC, butterfly valves are also
considerably more expensive than ball valves, but I will admit that it
has been a long time since I did a price comparison on them.
Now then, for more precise flow control, I switched over to gate valves
on both my pump and my elevated (gravity flow) HLT. There is a day and
night difference in the flow control precision and no downside that I
can detect. I do practice thorough cleaning and sanitation procedures,
but I also do not go to extremes. I don't autoclave equipment and such
and I have never had an infection or contamination problem to date.
IMO, you either have to be very careless with your cleaning and
sanitation procedures or be very unlucky if you have ongoing issues with
contamination. If it were very easy to go wrong, it would have
happened to me by now. I'm generally not a lucky guy, so if beers were
gonna go south with any regularity, they would do so with me first.
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