tubing from lowes

Hey, I need some tubing for some stuff I am building. I went to lowes and the tubing they sell says "do not use with icemaker"

I was wondering if this is because it's not food grade or whatever and shouldnt be in contact with the hot water/wort or if it's just because it's not pressure rated to be able to handle house line pressure. Which is it? Can I use it?

If I were a betting man I would say that it is not food grade. Most of the time you will need to go to a restaruant supply place to get food grade stuff like tubing.


loop

I think pet stores with aquarium supplies may sell food grade tubing.

I think "food grade" is a falacy. What else but water would Home depot expect you to use through the hose? It's not like buying fuel line at the auto parts store... Ice makers are hooked to a home's plumbing, so need higher pressure hose, vinyl no good there.

I read on some HBS site that their hose was "beer grade, the inside was smooother than 'food grade'". But it is all "blown" like a glass blower does, to get it's final diameter, so "beer grade" has to be ...hyperbolic? Would you think beer needs smoothness, after being tapped through poppet valves, rubber o-rings, all those fittings, valves, taps....but the hose ain't smooth???

I've been brewing through Home Depot vinyl hose, works fine. Just don't use it for beer if you have already used it to syphon gas. Don't ask how I know. The hops didn't cover the taste of the unleaded.

Have purchased tubing at Lowe's before. The stuff I bought had "food grade" on the box so I bought it. Worked fine.

Timmy

I've always bought my tubing from Lowes/Home Depot and I've never had a problem.

casebrew said:

I think "food grade" is a falacy. What else but water would Home depot expect you to use through the hose? It's not like buying fuel line at the auto parts store... Ice makers are hooked to a home's plumbing, so need higher pressure hose, vinyl no good there.

I read on some HBS site that their hose was "beer grade, the inside was smooother than 'food grade'". But it is all "blown" like a glass blower does, to get it's final diameter, so "beer grade" has to be ...hyperbolic? Would you think beer needs smoothness, after being tapped through poppet valves, rubber o-rings, all those fittings, valves, taps....but the hose ain't smooth???

I've been brewing through Home Depot vinyl hose, works fine. Just don't use it for beer if you have already used it to syphon gas. Don't ask how I know. The hops didn't cover the taste of the unleaded.

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Food Grade is certainly NOT a fallacy and if you are using tubing not graded as such then you are taking your health into your hands!

I've seen people buy plastic tubing from Home Depot and Lowes and run all sorts of things through it, including compressed air, fuel, and non-potable water, none of which requires food grade tubing.

well this topic has me worried now... i bought all my tubing from lowes, and have no idea whether it was food grade or not. it was in the plumbing section, if that makes a difference. i just drank some of my first batch last night, and i'm still alive this morning, so i'm guessing and hoping that it will be alright...

but for reference, what exactly is the problem with using non-food grade tubing? especially when all you use it for it tranfering from primary to secondary, secondary to bottling bucket, bottling bucket to bottles. what are the physical/chemical differences in the tubing?

No worries. Clear tubing is not going to poison you, unless you forget to suck the anti-freeze out of it after doing the car. Really. You're fine. Brew away. Plastic has better things to do than poison homebrewers.

bikebryan said:

Food Grade is certainly NOT a fallacy and if you are using tubing not graded as such then you are taking your health into your hands!

I've seen people buy plastic tubing from Home Depot and Lowes and run all sorts of things through it, including compressed air, fuel, and non-potable water, none of which requires food grade tubing.

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Fine, Bikebryan. Don't drink any of my beer.

I've seen people buying tubing at HD to run BEER through it.

Now, with all the time you save not drinking my beer, find me a meaningful example of clear vinyl hose that would harm me or my beer. The fact that some people put fuel through hardware store tubing is totally irrelevant. How about a trip to Home Depot, look for cautions on the box? "Do NOT use this hose for IPA, as it MAY make it taste more like Imperial Stout!" Doubt it.

Geez, I must have given away hundreds of bottles of beer. Not once have it heard "Pretty good, but it has the aftertaste of Non-Food Grade PVC tubing, in 3/8"...no..wait...1/2", molded in 2003, fall crop"......

Aand a subjective concept- Have you ever heard of some having a problem caused by the mythical "Food Use of Non Food Grade Tubing" ? This thread alone has 6 posts, all positive. Even yours has no facts behind it.

Ive noticed the "not for use with ice makers" sign as well, but the tubing that I have used was found in a different aisle, was marked as food grade, and wasn't marked "not for use with ice makers."

-a.

Could it possibly be that tubing is called "food grade" so the retailer can charge more for it?

Here is my take on this:

Food grade tubing will have to be certified that it does not leach dangerous chemicals into the liquid running though it. No matter how hot it is or how long it is in contact with it. This costs money and maybe even different materials need to be used. But in this case you can hold HD and/or the manufacturer responsible in case you get sick from it (if you can proof it).

Now will the non-food grade hose kill you. Probably not. I'm using HD vinyl hoses for my brewing water filter system and the lauter run-off. But I'm not quite happy with it. Especially with the lauter run-off, where it is exposed to hot wort. My concerns are more regarding long term effects (if there are any) and I will be looking into a food grade replacement. But I will still brew with it next weekend.

Kai

Anybody ever think that maybe if it wasnt to be used for icemakers that just maybe it wouldnt handle the cold that well and not that it leached toxins? Exspecially since it specificly stated icemakers and not other food type uses?

Have a homebrew, buy your tubing and if your "wee willy" falls off some time later in the night I'll take the blame.

Pumbaa said:

Anybody ever think that maybe if it wasnt to be used for icemakers that just maybe it wouldnt handle the cold that well and not that it leached toxins? Exspecially since it specificly stated icemakers and not other food type uses?.

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The "ice maker" use of tubing only refers to hooking up the fride to the faucet on the wall. I can't imagine that there is any fridge where you have to install the tubing insider the cooled space. This hook-up is the most common food-type use of this tubing and may be more descriptive to Joe than "non-food-grade".

Kai

I buy my tubing from morebeer.com. No sense taking a chance. My only problem is when I use the braided tube with to much heat( like out of the boil kettle to the chiller) after a while the suction seems to implode the tubing and collapse the inside closed on itself. I just replace it.

Food grade plastic is manufactured/formulated so that it is relitively impermable to oxygen and has had all of the manufacturing solvents/ by products cooked out of it.

You know that smell in the spring time at a place where they sell kiddie pools? That vinyl smell is the solvent. If your tubing smells like crap it will impart an off flavor or at least expose you to extreamly low levels of that funky stuff.

Pumbaa said:

Have a homebrew, buy your tubing and if your "wee willy" falls off some time later in the night I'll take the blame.

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How do you know his willy is wee?

Just so everyone knows, I went to lowes yesterday. If you buy the tubing that's pre cut and whatever, not the loose stuff, it says on it that it's good for "food/water uses"

So I got some of that.

silicon is supposed to be resistant up to 200 C. how does PVC fare?

So, I'm pumping beer out of a rocket pump with a polypin (cubitainer) from the camping section in Walmart and vinyl tubing from the plumbing section in Lowes. It tastes like plastic. I'm debating which piece to replace first.

Ice maker tubing has to stand up to pressure for years without being degraded by chlorine, oxygen, etc. They probably put that on there to avoid liability for flooding your kitchen. It probably doesn't tell you whether or not the tubing is food grade.

I'm pretty sure the "not for icemakers" is a pressure issue. Icemaker connections typically use brass compression fittings with a brass ferrule and they don't want the plastic tubing sliding out and flooding the house. The instructions I've ever seen for icemaker connections spec out a 1/4" OD copper tube.

I asked about this at a hardware store, which had a fairly wide variety of tubings.

They had tubing which, according to the box, was food-safe, but said 'not for ice makers'.

They told me that the reason the tubing wasn't for icemakers was because the water sits stagnant in the tubing for some time, and if the tubing is clear, algea will start to grow in it.

So, I guess that means that 'recommended for icemakers' is an additional 'spec' on top of food grade tubing.

Also, if I recall correctly, they had some translucent, but not clear (transparent) white tubing that was recommended for ice makers, but it was really stiff so I didn't buy it.

So, I guess the point of my story is that just because tubing isn't recommended for ice makers doesn't mean it isn't food safe.

food grade does not mean heat safe. You can have food grade tubing that if heated above 180F can leach toxic (or just plain bad-tasting) chemicals. You need food safe AND high temperature. Buy silicone tubing online for around $2 per foot. it is both food safe and good up through 300F (or is it 600F?.. whatever, no way to get up past 212 or so unless you dig a trench a few miles deep, heh).

deranged_hermit said:

but for reference, what exactly is the problem with using non-food grade tubing?

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In the commercial world, its an insurance issue. If something does go wrong, we can fall back on our supplier if they rated it as food grade, but if they did not and we used it for food/beverage, they can say we were operating outside of specifications...

This is not to say that there are not different hose materials -such as rubber, PVC, silicone, and different chemical formulations that provide different levels of oxygen permeability, color, flexibility, thermal response, UV resistance, etc. Some of these will give off unpleasnt odors or flavors, especially if you exceed their temperature threshold, but none of them used in a home brewing environment will leach a hazardous chemical in sufficient quantity to risk your health -unless you already are at risk due to other factors.

Most of the time, good enough is, but sometimes it isn't.

Malintent said:

whatever, no way to get up past 212 or so unless you dig a trench a few miles deep, heh

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Or turn the oven on.

I think I've isolated the taste to the tubing. After some persistent use, I've noticed that the plastic taste come from the first draw. I might try replacing the line with something from a homebrew store in the future. Anyone else get "plastic" when they draw the first pint after the beer has rested in the line for awhile?

There is some information here about plastic. http://www.badplastics.com/index.html

There is a great deal of steps involved in making food safe plastics. I work at a Ethylene unit and spent almost a year at a Polyethylene unit. I also spent 13 years at a Rubber Plant making synthetic rubber, some of which would end up in plastics. The ingredients used such as anti-oxidents and other preservitives need to be food safe. The grease used for bearings, oils used in barrier fluids for pump seals, the storage of the plastic pellets all need to be done up to certain standards.

I found an company that specializes in tubing, including medical and FDA food grade tubing. They have a chart that gives a "grade" to each type of tubing's resistance to certain chemicals.

Under "PVC" tubing, which is what they sell at Home Depot and Lowes that some of you are using, it gives a "C" rating to its resistance to Ethyl Alchohol, which would be the type our yeasties are producing.

So there's a scientific answer of what types of tubing are going to be suseptable to chemical "leak" when used as homebrew lines. I doubt 4-10% solutions of Ethyl Alchohol, like our brews, are going to particularly have an effect on a product that has an "average" resistance to that particular chemical, but better safe than sorry.

The BEST tubing types to transport Ethyl Alchohol based solutions, SCIENTIFICALLY, are neoprene, teflon, POLYPROPYLENE, natural rubber and several other types that are neither readily available or cost-effective. Silicone tubing gets a "B" rating.

http://www.gvc.net/docs/gvc_doc_00002.pdf

All of the tubing approved by the FDA for sanitary commercial food and beverage distribution is Polypropylene based, and runs about $30-40 per 50 feet.