I always use a new 3 foot piece of vinyl tubing when I transfwr chilled wort to the fermenter.
Am I the only one who uses new tubing? I get sketched on cleaning hose and reusing. What do you all do?
I have started recirculating my hot wort with my immersion chiller using a copper, hang over the top, diy recirc arm. I will use that to transfer since I imagine it is sanitized after recirculating hot wort for 10 minutes minimum.
Ive used the same hose for 15 years.
I rinse tubing inside and out with hot tap water and hang to dry. When using the next time it gets sanitized first. Never had a problem. I do replace it on occasion, but not very often. Maybe once every year or 2 on average.
Yeah, I’d say I’ve got about 10 years on my current vinyl tubing. Good sanitation practices will keep that product usable for quite a long time.
I change my draught line tubing regularly, but all the other stuff only when it gets so stained with iodophor that I can’t see if it’s clean or not. So rarely. I’m like Bob. Hot water rinse right away, drip dry, and sanitize before next use.
I’ve managed to use my beverage lines for quite a long time too. However, I do use some extreme cleaning procedures to keep them contamination-free. A nice warm lye solution soak does an amazing job at ridding any sort of deposits in the tubing. Do recognize that using a lye solution is SUPER dangerous and requires protective equipment and care.
I figure buying a few feet of draught line tubing every couple of years beats the emergency room fees when I mess up the lye thing. ;D
(I do clean my system every 2 weeks with alkaline cleaner, and quarterly with acid as well, per the recommendations in the DBQM.)
Dang! 15 years for the same hosing? Are you pulling my leg?
Btw I never toss it. I usually use it for cleaning fish tanks or stealing my neighbor’s gas. I will change my practice.
Maybe a pbw soak?
If you think it needs it. If you rinse well right away, it’ll probably stay clean. If you can’t rinse right away and it gets gunk dried up in it in it, PBW will take care of it.
I recently replaced my vinyl tube that serves the fermenter after 4 years and about 50 brews. It was beginning to turn a yellowish color and for a dollar, I figured it’s time to replace.
Let me tell you the other reason I’m not keen on bringing new vinyl tubing into my brewery. Vinyl does contain volatile compounds that take a while to leach from the tubing. I try to help that process by pre-boiling new tubing to help get the compounds out. Keeping ‘well-seasoned’ and relatively volatile-free tubing in my system makes sense to me.
On that note, I only buy my vinyl tubing from LHBS now. There are different compositions. The tubing I find at my hardware store lately (not in the past) has a powerful smell, the LHBS stuff doesn’t. It may contain some of the same volatiles Martin mentions, but obviously at lower levels at least. Hasn’t been a problem even if not preboiled Martin-style.