Beer Forum

I am looking for a "more" rigid tubing for the inlet side of my pump, when doing a whirlpool chiller. My current high temp tubing collaspes on itself during operation. There is still flow, but it is greatly reduced. Does anyone have a suggestion?
I did use whole hops with my last batch, so perhaps pellets would allow for better flow.
-Otterbrew

I use the "reinforced" stuff with the string in it... but I aint pumping with it either so YMMV and all that shit.
BUB

I am using the same tubing that Bub is using and with a march pump. I have not experienced any collapsing events. As bub stated YMMV blah blah.

HH

I also use the reinforced tubing with hot wort for recirculating my mash as well as whirlpooling with no problems at all.

And this reinforced tubing is "food grade"?
-Otterbrew

Hey Otterbrew,

I have had the same problem with tubing collapsing. I even used food grade re-enforced stuff. The main problem I had was that I going through a hop filter then to the pump and back into the kettle for a whirlpool. I found that the filter worked a little too well. It was blocking up stopping flow and causing the tubing to collapse.

Are you using a filter of some sort ?

Also 'food grade' is not the same as 'foode grade and high temperature'. As the tubing gets hot it softens and doesn't take too much pressure to make it collapse. You also need to remember that the re-enforcing used on most tubing is designed to stop the hose from exploding, not collapsing on itself.

I ended up changing my filtering setup to allow more wort into the pump. It works better but I'm still not totally satisfied. I'll either remove all filtering on the input of the pump or run copper pipes form the kettle to the pump.

mexican

This is the stuff I bought years ago.
Silicone Braid Reinforced
Peroxide cured polyesterBraid reinforced Silicone tubing offers higher pressure than unreinforced silicone tubing. Meets FDA standards. Able to resist extreme temperature variences, -80 degrees F to 350 degrees F, is odorless, tasteless and inert. Good weatherability properties-resists UV, ozone, gases, moisture, and temperature

B3 and the other big online brew stores have high temp tubing.

The clearer tubin is pretty flexible, but there's an almond color-barely see-through tubing which is a lot more rigid.

I use it from my kettle to pump to plate chiller. It can definitely handle the pressure plus the 212'F wort. The more flexible stuff is fine on the pump when vorlaufing or pumping IN to the kettle at mashout temps.