Reinforced Hose In Mash Tun?

[brewn00b]

Hi,

I'm building a mash tun. I have a beer belly falsie, and brass fittings for a bulkhead. I have seen photos where these are connected via reinforced hose (pvc?). I have seen this for sale around the place but it is only rated to 65deg C. Are there alternatives anyone can recommend that will work better at mash temps? (ideally i'd like it to be able to put up with at least 90deg so i can pre-heat my tun without much worry etc.)
Has anyone had success with the max 65deg stuff in a mash tun? Would copper pipe and compression fittings be a better way to go?

Any advice would be much appreciated

Thanks.

 

[NickB]

Either copper or stainless for sure. Will stop the chance of the hose collapsing under the weight of the grain as well.

Cheers

 

[raven19]

I used to use the very same reinforced hose to transfer near boiling wort to no chill vessels, etc with no issues.

Can't comment on its compressive strength under heat though.

 

[kymba]

just pull the inner hose out, toss it, and use the outside braid as your manifold

join it to a ss hosetail and away you go!

 

[IainMcLean]

Don't use PVC.

It's not stable at high temperatures and is compounded from some pretty toxic chemicals...

 

[NickB]

CPVC should be though. Still, would recommend copper or stainless though.

 

[IainMcLean]

I'll check it out tomorrow - PVC is being phased out of our industry due to it's toxicity, both rigid and flexible forms. uPVC is hard to stabilise - we used to use lead but have since moved to titanium dioxide and a few other chemicals. One of the other R&D engineers is currently working on a LCA case study on PVC so I'll get the low-down from him. Food-safe plastic is generally HDPE as it's not unstable like PVC.

 

[kymba]

so yeah, with all those dangers just use stainless braid. you can get it from hydraulic hose dudes liek pirtek and enzed...just secure it with a ss hose clamp and not a chromed / galv one

i was at a store on friday and they had some ss braid that was as thick as your arm, nearly bought some to make dry hop pockets

 

[NickB]

SS braid is fine. Slightly more prone to clogging though. Sorry, I thought you were talking about PVC reinforced hose.

Cheers

 

[Ross]

You need a short length of silicone hose, it's what we replace ithe reinforced pvc with with.

cheers Ross