milky looking tubing

I soaked a length of 3/8" vinyl tubing in One Step for twenty four hours. The tubing now has a whitish hazy look.

Running a few gallons of rinse water through it, treating with vinegar and then rinsing again helped. But the tubing is still not "new" looking.

Is this stuff okay despite the haze? Should I soak it, use it or just toss it?

I will be watching this thread very closely. I always wanted to know the answer to this as well.

I was thinking of pushing a shotgun cleaning kit cotton patch thru the tube with a wooden dowl (push-rod).

I think it'll work, but I have yet to try it.

It's scale, it happens quite often. It is similar to the stuff that accumulates on some bottles saked in oxyclean as well.

IIRC it's a reaction between the minerals in water you use, and the oxyclean.

See my blowoff tube"



It really is harmless. But you could try soaking/running them through some starsan, the acid in the sanitizer neutralizes some of the scale that the oxyclean causes. If you don't have starsan, you could try dilluting some white vinegar...of course you will have to rinse thoroughly to get the vinegar off.

My autosiphon tubing was like that for months before I replaced it, and the beer was fine.

As long as the tubing is clean and sanitized it will be fine despite what it looks like. If you replace the tubes, more than likely they will develop the scale too..

Not to disagree with Revvy, who happens to be my mentor and hero </suckup> but I have experienced the same after extended soaking in StarSan too.
I don't know that it is scale as much as just a reaction in the tubing material itself. I have a length of clear vinyl tubing that has been used for nothing but fresh clean water. The areas where water has sat for a period of time has developed a whitish haze as well. So.... there may be different effects we are seeing that are producing similar results.
Regardless, if properly sanitized it should be fine either way.

I get the same thing after I forget it in the starsan, it's fine and normal.

Don't worry about it. I've had it in my siphon tubing for a while. I've tried oxy-clean, bleach, and star san, and it always comes back, and I've never had a problem with it.

Alright, this might not be the answer but here it goes. I just had a new boat top done this year and it has new vynal clear windows, after I fished in the rain I rolled the windows up and put them away, not in the sun. My next trip out the windows were very cloudy and bot was I pi@#ed, my buddy told me to uroll them and leave them in the sun for a couple of days and within 2 days they were cleared up. Now I do not know if that will work for the tubing but its worth a try.:rockin:

I THINK, and I'm only speculating, we may be describing two different things. My tubing physically feels rough in those patches, it's on the outside of the hose...You can run your finger over it and the hose feels normal until you get to those patches, and they feel rougher, almost like plaster, yet you can't scrape it off.

But either way, it doesn't seem to affect the beer, as long as you clean and sanitize the hoses before each use.

it costs 18 cents a foot, i replace it when it gets like that.

bull8042 said:

Not to disagree with Revvy, who happens to be my mentor and hero </suckup> but I have experienced the same after extended soaking in StarSan too.
I don't know that it is scale as much as just a reaction in the tubing material itself. I have a length of clear vinyl tubing that has been used for nothing but fresh clean water. The areas where water has sat for a period of time has developed a whitish haze as well. So.... there may be different effects we are seeing that are producing similar results.
Regardless, if properly sanitized it should be fine either way.

Click to expand...

Me too. Soaked mine for a few days and that happened to it. Never hurt anything as far as the beer goes.

Mainebrew said:

Alright, this might not be the answer but here it goes. I just had a new boat top done this year and it has new vynal clear windows, after I fished in the rain I rolled the windows up and put them away, not in the sun. My next trip out the windows were very cloudy and bot was I pi@#ed, my buddy told me to uroll them and leave them in the sun for a couple of days and within 2 days they were cleared up. Now I do not know if that will work for the tubing but its worth a try.:rockin:

Click to expand...

this happened to me also and after i let it dry it looked clear and just like new.

uglygoat said:

it costs 18 cents a foot, i replace it when it gets like that.

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The thing about it is, if it keeps happening every couple of uses due to some combination of vinyl, chemicals and water, then it's a pita to keep buying hoses, despite the fact that it's 18 cents a foot.

IIRC mine developed scale on like the third batch...

I'd rather replace my hoses once a year than every few batches.

For example this weekend I wanted 6 feet of vinyl tubing for my autosiphon, well my LHBS was closed all weekend, and my hardware store didn't have that diameter either, and I really didn't feel like driving to the north end of town where the big box stores like HD and Lowe's are due to post turkey day crowds.

That's why, to me, if there's an in house solution to either preventing it OR clearing it, it is good to know.

I have the same problem with my tubing - in my case it's not from StarSan as I use Iodophor to sanitize my tubing. I'm pretty sure in my case the deposits come from cleaning the tubing by soaking it in OxyClean. The white deposits are on the inside of the tubing and rub off easily. I've found that using a 30 caliber rifle cleaning rod (the one-piece type to avoid scratches) with a cleaning jag (the eyelet type, not the pointed type) and a large cotton patch (.45 patches work well) with a little unscented dish soap easily removes the deposits.

Re: Star San and vinyl tubing-

I haven't been doing this long enough to see it yet, but if the vinyl itself is clouding in Star San, then you are actually altering the surface of the tubing.

An excellent experiment that I'm about to try will confirm. If the tubing gets "sticky" after a long soak in SS, then that's the case. You're literally "melting" the surface, scattering light. No. Big. Deal.


As a matter of fact, you might actually be making polyvinyl acetate on the surface. Never heard of it? We called it Elmer's Glue as schoolkids.

One thing people haven't mentioned yet is what type of tubing we're talking about? For my keg lines, I always make sure that they're sediment free (they're still as transparent as the day I bought them). As soon as I finish the beer, I flush the lines with water. After several brews, I'll flush them with PBW just to make sure there's no lingering sediment. I'll also sanitize if that line is waiting for another brew. I'm more cautious about keg lines since they're continually interacting with quite a bit of your beer.

With blow off tubing, I'm a lot less anal. I have just one that I've used....I rinse it and sanitize it....but now it's fairly discolored. This is alright, though, since there's nothing that stays in it for an extended period of time.

davesrose said:

One thing people haven't mentioned yet is what type of tubing we're talking about? For my keg lines, I always make sure that they're sediment free (they're still as transparent as the day I bought them). As soon as I finish the beer, I flush the lines with water. After several brews, I'll flush them with PBW just to make sure there's no lingering sediment. I'll also sanitize if that line is waiting for another brew. I'm more cautious about keg lines since they're continually interacting with quite a bit of your beer.

With blow off tubing, I'm a lot less anal. I have just one that I've used....I rinse it and sanitize it....but now it's fairly discolored. This is alright, though, since there's nothing that stays in it for an extended period of time.

Click to expand...

The tubing I am referring to my previous post is the 3/8 inch ID vinyl tubing I use for syphoning (I don't keg). After use I soak it in a OxyClean solution for a few hours, then flush thoroughly with warm tap water, but no amount of rinsing prevents the film buildup inside the tubing - no problem since I now know an easy way to clean it out. I've never had any problems using the tubing with the buildup, so I don't always clean it out after every use - I'll probably dump it after a few cleanings, just to be safe.

Two things can cause the clouding of PVC tubing, deposits on the outside/inside or leaching of plasticizers from the PVC. The scale issue has been covered, acid (vinegar) soak will take care of it and it's harmless anyway.

The plasticizer problem is not worrisome either. It just means your tubing is getting old. Plasticizers are the compounds added to PVC to make it pliable and clear. UV light and heat speed the release of plasticizers from PVC. When the tubing loses the plasticizers, it gets cloudy and stiff. Think of the plastic windows in convertible tops.

Don't replace your tubing based upon cloudiness, but stiffness.