Bad taste from Silicone Hoses.

[stratslinger]

Or, for those of us who have already been using BH silicone tubing for years - recirculating the mash, recirculating at the end of the boil to sanitize counter flow chillers, then circulating through the chiller, all processes utilizing that selfsame BH silicone tubing, maybe don't need an "extra" test to tell us that the stuff just isn't imparting any flavors? Like a few have posted already, it seems highly dubious that you're having this sort of issue and literally nobody else has come forward to report similar findings...

 

[kh54s10]

Good to hear that you solved the problem. It is still a mystery why no one else has that problem????

 

[steveoatley]

Is it possible that the OP was just tasting his 'poor' water ?

If you boil 2 gals water for an hour, and you are left with 1 gallon
You are still left with the "residual" minerals that were in your water
those... that can't be boiled off

Perhaps its that taste of those 'residual' minerals that are the real problem ?

OP
Did you try a test with
1. boiling 2 gals of H2O down to 1 gal and tasting that ?
With no hose sample in the test boil ?

just my 2 cents

Steve

 

[Fordiesel69]

As already mentioned WE USED 4 DIFFERENT WATER SOURCES.

1.) Known good / tested well water processed with a whole house rainsoft system + UV. (located where brew system resides)
2.) Known good municiple water from a different geographic area.
3.) Suspect high iron well water untreated from a different geographic area.
4.) Bottled Deer Park brand spring water.

It is not the water!!!!

We did boil the plain water without the hose in it. It tasted fine.

We are not willing to brew many batches of beer to prove / disprove this theory. However my theory / opinion is the tubing will impart a bad taste when brand new, and over several batches, fade away. I suspect this is the case as to why nobody is tasting what we are tasting.

 

[Dcpcooks]

Honestly, it may be worth all of the doubters to perform this simple test.

-Cut a 6" piece of hose off.
-Place in a small 6-8" sauce pan of boiling water making certain the hose is NOT touching the bottom of the pan.
-Boil for 1 hr, and pull a sample.

I would bet you will be able to detect a flavor of some kind, probably very nasty if a new hose. If an old hose maybe not.

We cannot comment on old used hoses.

I'm not doubting your off flavor or your solution. My experiences don't match yours but that doesn't mean yours are false.

I don't recall hearing of this issue in the past but that doesn't mean anything. It's entirely possible that the BH hose has come from a different source over the years or even more likely that they got a bad batch from China. QC is always suspect when buying from the cheapest supplier!

You've isolated the problem separately from your system and you've found a good solution that works for you, cheers!

As I said above I'll be looking for off flavors next batch.

 

[Bobby_M]

First, be careful with BrewHardware vs Brewer's Hardware. Two different companies.

Everything surrounding this issue should be considered in terms of exposure surface area to volume, time and temperature. In order to do valid testing on potential flavor leeching, you have to scale down a typical batch size so that's what we're doing with our testing in light of this claim.

Here's our test assumptions:
10 gallon batch at flameout being pumped for whirlpool for 15 minutes at full boiling temps.
A typical pumped system may use say up to 10 feet of tubing, 4 feet down to the pump and 6 feet up to the whirlpool port (this is probably more than necessary but it's a round number).
For every inch of 1/2" ID tubing, you have 1.57 square inches of surface area exposed to your media so 10 feet of hose is 188 square inches.

Ok, so to do a scaled exposure test with a small piece of tubing in a small volume of water, let's go down to 1 cup of water which is a 160:1 ratio. So, the surface area of tubing we need to expose to that cup of water is 1.175 square inches. This is where we can get in trouble because even a 1" long piece of tubing has 1.57 on the inside and 2.355 on the outside not counting the ends. So, I cut a piece and sliced it open to have a piece 3/4" x 3/4" square and that's a total of 1.125 on both sides plus the perimeter area of .375". It's a little more than our target but close enough for me.

We'll be getting our cup of RO water up to boiling, taking out a small control sample, then soaking that silicone sample for 15 minutes. Both samples will be chilled and compared. Of course there are other things to consider. RO vs. ion balanced. Wort vs water (acidic vs neutral), etc.

I don't think I would consider boiling the sample for a full hour as it's unrealistic in normal usage.

I've used peroxide cured silicone tubing for 10 years and never suspected leeching even once.

For the record regarding Dcpcooks last post, Brewhardware.com has NEVER EVER sold imported silicone tubing. Our tubing is extruded locally by a company using 100% DOW silicone base materials with FDA certification and it has been that way from the day we started selling it. Yes, we are apparently the cheapest on that particular tubing but it's based on volume and willingness to take less profit.

 

[Dcpcooks]

For the record regarding Dcpcooks last post, Brewhardware.com has NEVER EVER sold imported silicone tubing. Our tubing is extruded locally by a company using 100% DOW silicone base materials with FDA certification and it has been that way from the day we started selling it. Yes, we are apparently the cheapest on that particular tubing but it's based on volume and willingness to take less profit.[/QUOTE]


Thanks for clarifying your business name, position and the origin of your product. I have never used your tubing as I purchased from brewers hardware and not your company.

 

[Bobby_M]

We've only performed the test one time as described above and I let a few people compare the samples blind and there is no apparent difference. This is far from a good controlled experiment yet and the tasting sample size is very small but so far I'm not ripping the tubing out of my brewing rig anytime soon.

I will be boiling some tubing for a full hour to try to repeat the findings reported above, but again, the amount of tubing to amount of water probably matters as much as the long boil time does.

 

[jcav]

I use the clear silicone tubing from Bobby's store on my rig and have a lot of it. I use R/O water and I have never had off flavors in my beer from it. Just saying....

John

 

[brick_haus]

Has anyone here even heard of anyone attributing off flavor to silicone tubing? The OP claim seems absurd to me.

 

[Bilsch]

I appreciate the OP taking the time to post his experiences with the hoses. It's something I would have never thought to look at but only takes a little time to test and be sure. Silicone might normally be inert and flavorless however anything is possible where humans are involved in the manufacturing process.

 

[augiedoggy]

I appreciate the OP taking the time to post his experiences with the hoses. It's something I would have never thought to look at but only takes a little time to test and be sure. Silicone might normally be inert and flavorless however anything is possible where humans are involved in the manufacturing process.

The thing is the OP has now tested hose from multiple suppliers... suppliers used here by others that have not had the issue.

 

[kh54s10]

So we are now at 5 pages and no one else has reported experiencing the problem... And again, this thread is the first time in my 6+ years brewing that I have ever heard this.

Just wondering??

 

[kingo102]

Hi

I recently purchased the ultraclear silicone tubing from brewhardware.com, and have experienced exactly the same outcome as the OP. Only upon scouring the internet was it that i found this post, and even signed up to this forum to comment.

I've contacted Bobby, but am yet to hear a response. I did notice duting brew day that when i ran 68 deg C mash through the tube, a powdery substance was forming on the outside (i assume on the inside also). I then noticed the smell in my HLT when cleaning up. I would describe the smell as acidic / medicinal. Almot like a cross between star san and iodine (i don't use iodophor at all).


Therefore I'm posting here to conform the findings of the OP, and also to get another source of better tubing. The OP mentione Pt cured tubing from williamsbrewing. I contacted and they state it is not nsf51 certified. Also was concerned abt the low burst pressure. Ant other sources of Pt silicone that aren't astronomicaly priced? Should i even consider ej high temp pvc free? Or are leachables going to ruin another whole batch? I'm really starting to seriously consider hard plumbing the entire rig with ss...

 

[Bobby_M]

It takes a little time to read, understand and attempt to duplicate what customers claim. Trust me, when you have 1800 unique products, customers asking about this or that happens daily and it takes time to catch up.

Powder forming on the surface would indicate post cure blooming that is usually finished up during a hot oven bake just before boxing up the tubing. This is an oversimplification, but after the tubing cures, the oven bake causes certain compounds to off gas to make the tubing more inert. If it doesn't spend long enough in the oven, there will be some residual that offgassing over time at even room temp. As the tubing sits in the box, it continues to happen so the older the tubing is, the more inert it is. I confirmed this by comparing the freshest box I have to the oldest box (1.5 months apart) and the fresh box had a slight hint of acidic smell and the older box had none. I tested samples of both in boiling water and still detected nothing.

Put this in perspective. I sell 65,000 feet of this tubing every year at this point. If it were a root cause of off flavors, no one with a pumped rig would be making any good beer. My customers win best of show in countless competitions. That is not to discount these occasional reports of problems. I take it very seriously and I'm looking into the pros and cons of platinum cure base. It's a tricky game because we're already selling premium peroxide cure tubing at the same price the competition is selling the milky stuff for. If we move up to platinum, we may either get priced out or have to get grilled on profit margins.

 

[Bilsch]

Following this thread and then reading this:
https://www.dowcorning.com/content/publishedlit/52-1077-01.pdf
was enough for me to want to switch to Ptcured. I only have about 9 ft in my system so even at ~$9/ft its worth the peace of mind.
I went with this.
https://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=31576

 

[Justintoxicated]

I have the cloudy stuff from bargain fittings (I mean it's clear but still looks hazy to me!), I have not noticed the issue, but maybe my tubing now is just broken in?

I know I pumped boiling water through everything when I leak tested my rig and sanatized the pump the first time. I can't remember if I saw residual bloom at this point or anything in the water but I wouldn't be surprised if I did. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it I'm pretty sure I did see some strange stuff in the water. From the pump or tubing I don't know, but it was a bit worrisome. However i figured I had just got rid of whatever was in the tubing and pump, and went on with business. (I was thinking residual oils, or some leached garbage from the tubing).

But is this something that just happens the first time you use the tubing?

Tygon is good stuff but I want to see more evidence of an actual problem before shelling out $200 or more.

 

[kingo102]

Hi Bilsch,

I'm tending to agree. Justintoxicated, after spending ~$70 on a wasted 15 gal batch (not considering a solid 1/2 day of brew time plus another few hrs for hosing and cleaning), $120 variance for Pt cured is money well spent.

Bobby runs a fantastic business and I buy almost all my gear exclusively from him because it's generally the best - all to avoid these very issues. If we weren't passionate about what we did and were just making teenage swill, we wouldn't even be in this forum and would be happily buying vinyl junk from alibaba. I'm an engineer for work, so it's in my nature to arrive at the best technicsl solution, and justify cost afterwards....

I believe it's probably an anomaly (blooming from undercuring). However I'm still stuck with some dodgy tube and a wasted batch. I would certainly attempt to source pt notwithstanding the lower max working pressure

 

[Bilsch]

I'm an engineer for work, so it's in my nature to arrive at the best technicsl solution, and justify cost afterwards....

Indeed.
I've also spent a lot of money on my kit and this is a small price to pay in the scheme of things.
Another consideration is that my system is designed as low oxygen brewhouse and so the thought of a peroxide catalyst running in the system is quite worrisome.

 

[Malkavian]

Hi, sorry for my bad english...
I experenced the same issue as the OP with silicon tubes bought from brewhardware.com. Rubber taste in water after few batches.
I replaced hoses with others from another vendor to fix the issue.
Since that event I always perform CIP procedure with caustic soda followed by citric acid before and after every batch in order to keep the tubes clean.
Never experienced rubber taste again. I hope this will help.

 

[VincentD]

Same here, We were trying where this taste was coming and pin-pointed our silicone tubing (2 different provider in Canada).

It's a BIAB system and we recirculate from mash, boil and through the counterflow chiller so probably for 2hours in the tubing with varying temperatures. I have boiled a part a small part of the tubing for 20 minutes and tasted it compared to a sample of boiling water... and that's the taste I find in the beer...

We will try to do a batch without circulating that much and see what happens.

 

[kevink]

Has anyone else has tried the platinum cured hose from Williams? It's actually not very expensive at $2.19/ft. My tubing is a few years old, so I'm thinking about replacing all of my silicone since some is pretty grungy looking.

https://www.williamsbrewing.com/12-SILICONE-TUBING-sold-per-foot-P3483.aspx

 

[augiedoggy]

I know stout sells the "thermoplastic" tubing otherwise known as santoprene with thier 3bbls systems... its cheaper yet and a lot of nano breweries are using it.

 

[Queequeg]

UPDATE:

We purchased "Platinum Cured" silicon hose from williamsbrewery.com. It is identified with the orange stripe and is more transparent. It is only rated at 5psi up to 350 degrees but that is a non issue. This hose has yet to affect flavor. We recirc'ed boiling water thru it for 1 hr and picked up no flavor. It seems like the "Platinum Curing" process is far superior and is used in medical field. Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but so far so good.

As for the ruby hose, and the brewhardware hose, it was sampled by many people, some unaware of the issue, and they thought it was horrific. 4 different water sources including bottled water all had the same result. I think that those who are not experiancing the flavor, either are not able to detect it for whatever reason, or after hundreds of gallons passing thru it, stripped the rubbery chemicals off the tubing.

I said it was the curing in post 9

 

[John Horton]

Definitely having this problem as well. I've purchased silicone tubing three times and each time it looks a bit different. The first was quite translucent, the second milky with residual powder - apparently talc to prevent sticking during manufacturing -, and the last being quite opaque and white like a silicone washer.

I was having problems with taste in my tubing that I isolated by boiling it, just like other people in this thread. Residual malty/medicine taste. I tried everything to get it out using pbw, oxiclean, pure bleach soak over 24hrs, star san. This lessened it but its still there. Eventually bought entirely new tubing. I noticed an odor from the tubing upon purchase (nothing offensive), but upon boiling the tubing it was jarringly present in the water. A clean of the new tubing with oxiclean did not remove the flavor or lessen it.

Doing more research based on this thread, I determined that there is a big difference between peroxide cured tubing and platinum cured tubing and that peroxide cured tubing is not usually used in medical/food because of "purity issues". I'm no chemist so bare with me, but in peroxide cured tubing there can be residual "organic acids" that have aromatic properties. This is lessened by a long cure time but it can still be present. I suppose one could even consider these acids not just a contaminant, but perhaps even a toxin. With platinum cured tubing these organic compounds do not exist and there is apparently zero taste/flavour transfer compared to the possibility of a "very small" transfer in peroxide cured tubing. This is why it is recommended in the food/medicine departments.

I'm going to be getting platinum tubing soon and I'll let you know the results. And to all the doubters out there, no you may not notice it in your wort but you damn might notice it in boiled water. Just recirc hot water through your tubing for 30 min and draw a sample...

For sources just google peroxide vs platinum cured silicone tubing...

 

[Jayjay1976]

Total nonsense. He's got some bad orings or a bit of non-food grade grease on something. Even a minuscule amount of conventional grease or residue from manufacturing on a small part can give off a massive plastic flavor when exposed to boil temps. The hose might have absorbed it, but I don't believe for a second they are the source. With extended testing it may have faded which might make it seem like new hoses solved it, but I'm guessing it's a bad component elsewhere in the system.

 

[kevink]

Total nonsense. He's got some bad orings or a bit of non-food grade grease on something. Even a minuscule amount of conventional grease or residue from manufacturing on a small part can give off a massive plastic flavor when exposed to boil temps. The hose might have absorbed it, but I don't believe for a second they are the source. With extended testing it may have faded which might make it seem like new hoses solved it, but I'm guessing it's a bad component elsewhere in the system.

The homebrew supply "companies" that sell silicone tubing are so far from the manufacturers of the tubing that we have no idea what we are buying. I would not be surprised at all if some of the tubing that is sold by homebrew vendors is total garbage or stuff destined for the trash can.

 

[John Horton]

With extended testing it may have faded which might make it seem like new hoses solved it, but I'm guessing it's a bad component elsewhere in the system.

And yet new hoses did not solve it. Boiled directly without any pumps, orings, etc, the flavor of the tubing is there. Boiled in a pan it would be the same thing. The exact flavor that is equivalent to the aroma wafting off the tubing when I bought it. And furthermore, my old silicone tubing, which became completely discolored overtime, would not only turn the water yellow but also impart massive flavor even after all of the intense cleaning I mentioned i.e bleech 24 hrs.

Anyways, test it your self instead of blinding asserting an unproven point? I mean this is exactly the reason I brought up the whole peroxide vs platinum cure debate. Because it is known by the actual manufactures of such tubing that peroxide curing has purity issues.

 

[SpikeBrewing]

For anyone still having issues with silicone we'd recommend ours. We work directly with the extruder which ensures only FDA material is used and we mandate platinum cured as it is really the only option for food contact.

https://spikebrewing.com/products/silicone-tubing

 

[Jayjay1976]

And yet new hoses did not solve it. Boiled directly without any pumps, orings, etc, the flavor of the tubing is there. Boiled in a pan it would be the same thing. The exact flavor that is equivalent to the aroma wafting off the tubing when I bought it. And furthermore, my old silicone tubing, which became completely discolored overtime, would not only turn the water yellow but also impart massive flavor even after all of the intense cleaning I mentioned i.e bleech 24 hrs.

Anyways, test it your self instead of blinding asserting an unproven point? I mean this is exactly the reason I brought up the whole peroxide vs platinum cure debate. Because it is known by the actual manufactures of such tubing that peroxide curing has purity issues.

I get all mine exclusively from brewhardware.com, only source I've ever used and I can assure you I have never experienced any off flavors, etc. Oh, and I recirculate continuously during the boil through a hop basket. Beer stained? Sure. Horrible off flavors? No way.