Pipe dope vs tape

[Ramdough]

So I did some home plumbing and next I plan to start setting up my brewery.

I have occasionally had Teflon taped NPT joints leak, but I have never had an issue with Teflon pipe dope.

I prefer pipe dope for that reason.

Is there any reason not to use pipe dope on my electric brewery? I would have boiling wort touching the joints with pipe dope, so I want to make sure it does not degrade or leach nasty things into the beer.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Neither are meant to seal the joint. In fact, they are meant as an anti-galling product to aid in making sure the threads seal themselves. Thus, if the threads leak it's neither the tape nor the dopes failure. Some threads just don't like to mate.

 

[Beernik]

I prefer tape because of the mess associated with putty. I just discovered that there is a silver colored (nickel coated) Teflon tape for SS plumbing that I'm going to have to investigate.

I did find this SOS pipe putty that says it is high temperature rated and food grade.

 

[Ramdough]

The pipe dope I have used was labelled as a sealant.

I had 4 threaded joints with tape and 2 of them leaked even with them as tight as I could get it.

I then use pipe dope and the sealed right up without any problems.

Pipe dope is like any other paste.... It makes a mess if you are not very careful and don't clean up.

I was just concerned with the food materials and hight temps.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[kevink]

It sounds like you might need to use more tape! I go around my brewery fitting 10-15 times.

There is always the possibilty of pipe dope getting in your wort, but not so much with tape. Even if it does, it's going to remain in one piece and never make its way to your glass. I can't say that about pipe dope.

 

[John53189]

Buy the better tape, its worth it. Some of the good stuff will cost up to $4 a roll, but you wont have to worry about dope getting into your wort. I do quite a bit of plumbing, and i only use whitlam blue dope on threaded connnections (some are high temp) on cpvc (schedule 80). I used blue monster teflon tape in the brewery, all good. Someone will argue that you shouldn't have a leak with the smallest amount of tape or dope, but I don't get callbacks for using too much.

 

[rhythmsteve]

I prefer dope in my pipe

 

[watermelon83]

I had a plumber relative tell me me he uses dope when he doesn't want to come back and tape when the old lady was hot. Your mileage may vary.

 

[kevink]

Dope and hot ladies, for sure.

Most of the fittings we use in our breweries are most likely imported crap, so lots of tape is necessary. We are also usually trying to a align ball valves or 90s to be level, so you have no choice but to use tons of tape to get the threads to seal when the fitting is clocked the way you want it. In this case the tape is the thing that seals, not the threads.

 

[paperairplane]

I use tape. Kudos to the plumber who does ****ty work so he can try and hook up though.

 

[wildmanvictoria]

So I did some home plumbing and next I plan to start setting up my brewery.

I have occasionally had Teflon taped NPT joints leak, but I have never had an issue with Teflon pipe dope.

I prefer pipe dope for that reason.

Is there any reason not to use pipe dope on my electric brewery? I would have boiling wort touching the joints with pipe dope, so I want to make sure it does not degrade or leach nasty things into the beer.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

Hey, I’m am wondering the same thing as you were, pipe dope vs. Teflon tape,
What was your outcome? Did you ditch the dope? Any leaching off flavours?

 

[Bobby_M]

Use a thick, high quality tape.