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do yall feel food grade plastic tubing on discharge off condenser effects taste? i have access to it, and also is easy to remove and stow away column.

breeze wrote:do yall feel food grade plastic tubing on discharge off condenser effects taste?

Probably not... but I'd be WAY more worried about what nasty chems are bein' introduced to my spirits than how the flavour is bein' affected.

What is it made of? If it is the common vinyl (pvc) I would avoid it at all cost, for exactly the reason you suggest. It will not like the alcohol and possible heat at all - and then neither will you. It is such an easy thing to avoid when we go to such lengths to control flavour and smell of our products. However some Silicon tubing may be OK but is harder to control as it's really droopy. Their is some other stuff used for fuel lines etc, but that does also tend to lend unwanted flavours (and other unwanted's) with warm alc consentrations.

It isn't too hard to bend a copper pipe to shape to fit over the top of a bottle or funnel (cu/s.s./glass funnel etc). The plastic tubing is ok to decant/rack off washes as this is a low alc and very quick process.

I used to use a food grade silicone tubing for a take off tube. I'm not sure if it was the still (probably so) or the tubing that was causing some of the off flavors but I changed to 1/4" copper. It handles the heat better and can be bent to direct the outfall where you want.

Breeze, there is more information than you can poke a pointed stick at in this forum regarding plastics and etho. Do a search, read the information and make your decision based upon what you read. Nobody can force you to use or not to use plastic, but this forum takes safety as a serious matter. The final decision is yours of course, but I doubt that anyone in here will support its use. Even you are unsure, hence your question.

blanik

blanikdog wrote:Breeze, there is more information than you can poke a pointed stick at in this forum regarding plastics and etho.

And you will find it here.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=41