A brewery site visit is short. The supplier sees the drains, not the schedule; they see one floor, not the changeover pattern. The information that changes the quotation is the information the brewery controls: surface list, soil list, downtime windows, and utility facts. This checklist covers what to prepare before a cleaning-equipment supplier quotes for brewery production areas.
1. A surface list before a machine list
Write one line per surface group, not one line for "the brewhouse". Typical groups are mash tun and kettle exteriors, piping and valve clusters, conveyor and packaging frames, floor and wall tiles in wet zones, drains and channels, and the CIP skid room. For each group record the material (stainless, painted steel, tile, epoxy, gasket and seal), the finish, whether the surface drains or holds water, and whether anyone can reach it with a lance without a ladder. A supplier cannot size anything without this list, and a quotation that ignores it is a price, not a plan.
2. A soil list with photographs
"Dirt" is not a specification. Split it into sugar and starch film, hop and yeast residue, protein film, hardened syrup, lubricant and chain oil on conveyors, and scale or stone on floors and drains. Photograph each type from a fixed angle at the same distance, and note how long the deposit has been there and what is used today. Heat behaves differently on a fresh film and on a baked one. This list drives mode choice, dwell time, and whether a chemical step stays in the process.
3. Downtime windows and cleaning windows are not the same
Give the supplier your real calendar: which equipment is free between batches, which lines are washed at the end of a shift, and which surfaces can only be reached during a planned maintenance week. Cleaning time is a production constraint, so state the maximum time each area may be out of service and who signs it back. A method that is technically sound but longer than the window will be abandoned on the night shift.
4. Utilities at the exact location
For every proposed work position, record what is actually there: a protected socket on which circuit, cable route and how far it would cross a walkway or forklift lane, distance to the nearest water tap, floor fall and where the runoff goes, and door and gate clearances for moving a machine in and out. Fixed machines need an incoming water connection and a drain path planned before installation, not discovered on the day. Where you already have a fixed unit, its product page states what the installation demands. On the PowerDe HW02 steam cleaner page the listed items are 220 V working voltage, 6 kW heating power, an 80 L SUS304 tank, and a tap-water inlet with a 1/2 inch 4-point internal-tooth joint. Treat those as installation facts to check against your site, not as a claim that any brewery surface can be cleaned.
5. Water, runoff, and where effluent leaves the building
State your water capacity: how much process water you can spare for cleaning, whether recovery is required, and which drains take food-process effluent versus surface runoff. Breweries already manage effluent volume and load; a cleaning method that adds volume and sugar and protein to that stream needs a cost attached. Also state your water quality at the tap, because hardness shows up as scale inside equipment and is a maintenance item, not a cleaning result.
6. Food-safety and hygiene rules the method must respect
Send the rules, not just the room. These include your allergen and product-changeover rules, wet versus dry zone classification, the cleaning chemicals you currently use and their contact times, air and spray distance from open product, and how your hygiene verification works (swabs, ATP, visual, ATP timing). A supplier who does not know where open product sits will propose a spray method you cannot approve. Confirm which surfaces may get wet, how long a surface may stay wet, and what the release check is before the line runs again.
7. A written no-spray list signed by maintenance
Before any trial, maintenance should sign a list of components that must be masked or excluded: control cabinets and drives, sensors and encoders, cable chains and connectors, bearing and gearbox lubrication points, sealed bearings and gaskets, insulation and bonded panels, vents and openings, and any electrical enclosure near a wash bay. Whoever owns the equipment signs it. If maintenance cannot rule a component out, that area stays on a dry method.
8. Your own baseline numbers
Compare against your own data rather than against a brochure. Time the current method on your worst area, with your own staff, and record minutes per area, number of refills and walking distance to water, chemical volume, water and effluent volume, rework counts, and the interval before the area is back in service. Four numbers, measured twice, are enough. Any proposal is then judged on whether it moves those numbers, not on how the equipment looks.
9. Define the trial on your own surfaces
Ask the supplier to run the trial on the surface you pick, with your operators present, using your dirtiest example. Fix the variables up front and write them down: mode, nozzle type, distance from the lance tip to the surface, travel speed, number of passes, dwell time, and how the loosened residue is recovered. Ask for the same settings to be repeated so the result is reproducible. Then write pass criteria before the trial starts, phrased as something a person can verify: bare metal visible under the deposit, no residue in the drip tray, no standing water in the channel, floor safe to walk on within the agreed interval. Name who signs the sheet and which check fails automatically.
10. Equipment upkeep and who owns it
Put the machine in your own maintenance system before it arrives. Assign the descaling task and the water-inlet filter check, and record the water hardness at the connection point you actually use. Steam machines ship with protective functions; on PowerDe cleaning-equipment product pages the named items include leakage, short-circuit, high-temperature, high-voltage and water-shortage protection. A protection trip is a fault to log and investigate, not a reset to repeat, and the log belongs with the cleaning record.
11. Where to send the pack
Send the surface list, soil photographs, calendar of windows, utility findings, no-spray list and baseline numbers together. That package is also what an engineering survey for customized cleaning equipment needs, and it lets a supplier separate a standard machine from a real project. Brewery, beverage and food-plant work is listed among the directions covered by the Cleaning Equipment Series; treat the category as a business direction to discuss, not as a guarantee that a named model suits a named surface. If you want that conversation started, send the same pack through contact PowerDe.
