We have 2 FF, one for beer and one for wine. We find them very easy to clean. I have floated bags of both fruit and oak in the FF, with no problems. My hubbie is the beer maker, and although his FF stinks like beer, he also has had no issues with cleaning. The only small nuisance is the valve, as when you turn it to open/close, a little bit of liquid gets "stuck" up in there. But now that we know about it it is fine, but when we didnt know, we found sediment coming out while cleaning, and we did uinderstand where it was coming from. While cleaning it, to clean out the valve, we open it very slightly to let the cleaning water drain through it and then open and close it when we spray the sanitizer in before we start our batches. We love our Fast Ferments! I think I may try the leaving hubbies out in the sun to see if that helps with the beer smell, once he's done this batch! Oh, and I do rack to carboys for bulk aging with my wine.