Cleaning and maintenance records in Breww

Creating cleaning and maintenance processes and schedules in Breww enhances your traceability and allows you to record when cleaning and maintenance procedures occur accurately. You can even add readings taken during a process, such as an ATP reading on a fermentation vessel, and any stock items used in a process, such as any cleaning detergents, to help log all the necessary data to make sure your records are up to date, and procedures are being followed.

Cleaning & maintenance processes

Cleaning and maintenance processes refer to the primary procedure surrounding the activity. For example, a process on a fermentation vessel could be ‘FV CIP’. This process can then be applied to multiple fermentation vessels.

To add a cleaning and maienace process head to ProductionViewCleaning & maintenanceAdd process.

You can then give the process a name, a process ‘type’ and process instructions. There are also two checkboxes: one that enables the process to require a sign-off from another Breww user to ensure work is getting double-checked and an option to block equipment from being used if a process has not been completed.


You will now be able to add your required stock items for the process and any readings and measurements that need to take place during the process. You can also select if these are required before completing the process.

Cleaning & maintenance schedules

By selecting the Screenshot 2023-11-08 at 15.35.48 button, you will be able to add a schedule for a specific piece of equipment that uses this process, and select from the following fields. For this example, I have created a CIP schedule for FV7 to be cleaned every time it is used, with the next one due after the next time it is used.



On completion of this, your cleaning and maintenance schedules for different items of equipment will be listed in the process.

Completing your cleaning and maintenance records and unblocking equipment

Any cleaning and maintenance records that are due will show at the bottom of the main batch screen, where you can view the cleaning record via the view record button Screenshot 2023-11-09 at 14.40.59 (alternatively, you can select to view a vessel to view any records due).

Any equipment where the process requires it to get blocked will now be prevented from being used and marked with a cleaning and maintenance vessel icon.

When on the cleaning record, you will see the option to Mark as in progress, allowing the rest of your team to see that this has been started. You can also add your stock item that is required for this process; in this example, it is caustic.

Once this has been marked as in progress and your stock items added, the cleaning record will be marked with key information regarding the stock item used, including when it was used and who by.

Any readings & measurements can then be entered, for example, an ATP reading, which again will mark this onto your cleaning record. You can also add any files, photos and attachments related to the record.

Once all the required actions in the process are completed, you will see your Record log & notes automatically populated with the relevant data. You will then be able to fill in the Add notes to record box to add any additional comments to the record.

If you then select Complete, you will see the cleaning record is marked as completed, so long as you don’t have the sign-off requirement turned on for the process. If you do have this on, you will get a message of Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 15.47.44. Another Breww user can then head to record and select Screenshot 2023-11-21 at 15.49.20.

Viewing your historical cleaning and maintenance records

Upon completing your cleaning and maintenance record, the equipment will be unblocked and ready for use! You will then be able to view your record history by viewing a vessel and then Cleaning and maintenance records, alternatively you could head to ViewCleaning & maintenanceManage equipment, and select to view the equipment. You will then have your historical cleaning & maintenance records for the piece of equipment listed. Below is an example of the vessel ‘FV7’.

You can also access a full record history by selecting ViewCleaning & maintenanceView recordsView record history, where you will be able to filter your records by using the Breww QL filter.

is it possible to trigger a cleaning and maintenance process and record without it being an a schedule, and is cleaned on an ad hoc basis?

Hi John, thanks for your comment. Yes, you can manually trigger a cleaning and maintenance record without it being on a schedule. You can do this by going to ProductionViewVessels and selecting the Cleaning and maintenance records button on the vessel.
Screenshot 2024-06-20 at 12.41.27

You can then select the blue Manually trigger C&M record button. This will display your cleaning and maintenance processes, which you can then trigger on the vessel. You can also perform this on your other equipment by heading to ViewAll equipment. Let me know if you need anything else. Cheers!

Can we export the cleaning records into excel? For example we have an option to do a caustic clean on our BBTs, but normally we do an Acid clean. The difference is just a yes/no under the required BBT Clean record. I would like to track the frequency we do the caustic clean. It looks like the only way to do now is to click on each record and see what the detail is underneath?

Have a distinct caustic process? Manually trigger it? What decides you to do one? Genuinely curious.

Incidentally, why can’t we schedule multiple processes? It would make this kind of thing easier. Or schedules with “gaps” / alternates…

And why can’t we choose to “skip” a scheduled process - i.e. mark it as not completed (showing on the history), while clearing it from pending / blocking?

Hi Aaron, Thanks for your comment! Currently, you cannot export cleaning and maintenance records to Excel. It sounds like creating an additional cleaning and maintenance process would help here rather than using a single process that represents two different cleaning processes.

For example, you could have one process called ‘CIP Caustic clean’ and one process called ‘CIP Acid clean’. If there is a set pattern in which you perform a process, then you can schedule these; for example, you could set these to alternate. There are a few limitations to this; for example, if you perform your acid clean each time the vessel is used, apart from on the 10th time, where you perform an alternative process, this wouldn’t be possible, as both would be triggered on the 10th use. This is where @jon-kyme2’s suggestion would help, of being able to schedule gaps, or skip a process; it would be great if this could be raised as a feature request!

If there is no specific schedule for when one will be done over the other, you could manually trigger the process rather than have them on a schedule (as described in my response further up this thread).

This means that you will then be able to see the specific processes performed without having to enter the record. You could do this by heading to Production → View → Cleaning & maintenance → View records → View record history and using the BrewwQL filter to filter the history by process name.

Let me know if you have any other questions, Cheers!

Hi Ben. Understood but its not ideal. We want to have the vessel blocked and a cleaning record entered before it is used again. However Breww doesn’t not give us flexibility in this regard. Could you not make it so that the tank is unlocked as long as any clean is done, acid or caustic?

Also I don’t understand why it is so hard to get our data. We put the data in, but we can’t get it out.

Hi Aaron, thanks for your reply! Breww will allow the vessel to be blocked when a cleaning record is due so that it can’t be used again until the record is complete; however, the triggering of the vessel blockage is directly related to the process. For example, if the ‘Caustic’ process has been triggered, this process has ‘blocked’ the vessel; the vessel cannot be unblocked by completing a different cleaning process, as it is the caustic clean that is considered as being required, which will then unblock the vessel. I definitely understand what you are trying to achieve here; if you have any suggestions for improvements to this feature, it would be great if you could raise these as feature requests!

Likewise, there currently isn’t an export function for cleaning and maintenance records, but if you would like to see this added to Breww, it would be great if you could add this as a feature request. This will ensure your ideas/suggestions are logged and land with the right team! If you need this data outside of Breww, currently, the only way to extract this would be to go to the ‘View record history’ page, as mentioned above, copy the data, and then paste it into Excel. Let me know if you have any other questions! Cheers!

Have made a FR for a “Cleaning Cycle” with alternatives.

And another FR for cancelling a scheduled process

@aaron-taubman Good news! The kind folks at Breww have given us the ability to “Cancel” a scheduled process. I think this will make it easier for us to handle this kind of thing. It does require us to set up two separate processes - one for the usual job and another for the exceptional / on-demand alternative (which is perhaps the best approach anyway?). i.e. you might have a scheduled “acid” clean, but when required you could “cancel” this and manually trigger the “caustic” process. So your cleaning and maintenance records would properly reflect what actually happened.

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