Five Star refers to them as being the same thing:
http://www.fivestarchemicals.com/breweries/craft-brewers/line-cleaning/
Wow, that's confusing. Each of the 5 different cleaners listed seems to achieve a different cleaning objective than the other 4.
What part is confusing?
Beverage Line Cleaner / PBW: A Non-caustic, environmentally and user-friendly alternative Line Cleaner.
The 5 Star chemist assured me that BLC and PBW are in fact the same thing only packaged for jurisdictional reasons to satiate regional Health Department requirements of product labeling for application. We further discussed "other" similar products and it was said that they are all basically the same active ingredients at different ratios/dilutions depending on application.
I've used pbw to clean the lines without issue. What makes you think it won't work? Or is it that you think it would be bad for the line?
ocluke said:Who is this written to?
I didn't mean to suggest there was anything bad about using PBW for cleaning beverage lines, or even that it was an inferior product to an alternative. The only point was to share the information that I found: PBW is not the same product as Beer Line Cleaner (BLC). They seem to be quite different.
Read this response I just posted on the other thread. I'm pretty sure Five Star Chemicals doesn't make a product called BLC. BLC is a product by National Chemicals, Inc., while Beverage Line Cleaner/PBW is a product by Five Star Chemicals. Post #3 of the thread I linked to above has links to the material safety data sheets for each product.
Brewerforlife said:B.L.C= potassium hydroxide
Isn't that lye or potash? I have some sodium hydroxide around (similar properties to potash), it's nasty stuff. Used in soap making and also as the quintessential drain opener...
I've used pbw to clean the lines without issue. What makes you think it won't work? Or is it that you think it would be bad for the line?
But, there WAS a time when 5 Star marketed their line cleaner as BLC too. I suspect there has been some legality between the names.
The conversation with the chemist was begun by asking the efficacy of using their Liquid Line Cleaner as Opposed to their BLC product. And I was advised that the BLC product was simple a liquid version of PBW.
So, your argument to my post is out of context because the OP asked "Is Five Star's BLC the same as PBW dissolved? Or are they different products?"
If the question was written this way there would have been no need for my post.Note that the OP asked about two 5 Star products and the question was not "Is National Chemicals BLC the same as 5 Star's PBW".
as I see it, there was never a question about similarities or dissimilarities between two separate companies products.
Five Star's Liquid Line Cleaner (LCC #1) is not the same product as their Beverage Line Cleaner (PBW). They are different products. The former is a caustic product, the latter is a non-caustic and environmentally friendly product.
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