Probably a newbie question, but does the vinyl tubing smell rub off and affect beer taste. I just set up a cleaning in place ball for the top of my conical fermenter. Using a sump pump to get enough pressure and because of that I decided to go with braided vinyl tubing from the pump to the CIP ball. Then to get a big enough outflow I also used 1 inch vinyl tubing coming out of the bottom. The vinyl rubber smell is pretty bad and I just want to make sure that I won’t somehow transfer to my conical.
Thanks
For new tubing, it would be good to run some plain water through the tubing before sanitizing and putting it to good use. After the initial rinse it should be fine for a long time (but continue to sanitize as needed of course).
When I’ve seen people complain about vinyl taste getting into the beer it’s usually sourced from improperly manufactured tubing.
Run water or water with vinegar through it (rinse out the vinegar with more water) and then run water through and taste it. If you taste vinyl then replace the tubing but otherwise it should be fine even if you smell vinyl.
If it smells really bad… proceed with caution. A couple years ago I bought two picnic taps, fittings, tubing from Northern Brewer. I opened the packs they came in and was met with a very strong plastic/vinyl smell. Did multiple soaks in PBW, star san, etc. Smell remained. Tried pouring beer through the tubing… tasted like a glass of plastic. It was horrible. Never did get the smell to go away… ended up throwing them away. Not sure why that particular pair of tubing was that way - never had it like that before or since - but those were awful.
Volatiles in the plastic will come out and affect the beer. One way to speed a chemical reaction (including volatilization) is to heat it. I preboil any vinyl tubing that I use in my brewery.