Silicone rubber tubing in the Dairy Industry
Demands for higher standards of quality and improved yields have seen silicone rubber products replace organic rubbers across a wide range of applications including dairy tubing. With its high strength and resilience properties, silicone is an ideal material for dairy tubing which is often exposed to the elements and subjected to harsh treatment. Viper Performance's range of dairy tubing offers the highest Durability, Flexibility and Hygiene performance.
The dairy industry demands a very specific type of tubing. It must be highly flexible, resilient and reliable, and also have the hygiene properties to satisfy international food standards. All silicone tubing has been perfected so that is easy to install, maintain and replace. Other applications of silicone in this sector include milking parlours, cow mats, milking liners, air hoses and machine seals and gaskets.
Durability / Flexibility
Viper Performance dairy tubing has been specially formulated to provide strong wall structure and is tested to withstand the daily wear and tear of dairy parlours. Our tubing stays flexible up to -60°C, ensuring no cracking or splitting occurs during cold winter temperatures. Our manufacturing facility is fully-integrated which includes high purity injection molding and extrusion.
Hygiene
Viper Performance dairy tubing or pulse tubing has been specially designed with an ultra-smooth inner surface to reduce the risk of particle build up from the milk. Our highly polished stainless steel tooling contributes to the smooth inner surface of the tube increasing the efficiency of daily hygiene cleaning, highly resistant to sanitizing chemicals and to temperatures, reducing the risk of harmful bacteria build up. Compared to organic Rubber hoses, platinum grade silicone used in our tubes will reduce the bacteria growth up to 6 times of that of natural black rubber.
Superior performance of our Pulse Tubing helps improve the productivity of milking parlours. High tear resistance and rebound properties to stand up to the rough treatment by cattle. Easy to clean and sterilise, helping to reduce total bacteria counts. Our dairy hoses are extremely long lasting
Brewing & Beverage Tubing
PVC and reinforced PVC tubing is often adopted for home brewing even although it is typically only suitable for temperatures up to 60 deg C this is unsuitable for higher temperatures involved in brewing.
Just see how PVC tubing reacts and affects taste after a few minutes in boiling water once it has cooler down. To move hot water and wort around high temperature food grade tubing is available from Viper Performance in a large number of sizes and lengths. The silicone tubing is odourless, tasteless, inert, and FDA food-grade approved from -100F all the way up to 500F. The tubing is also translucent which allows you to see the flow of liquid and air bubbles.
The use of less expensive Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) tubing to transfer hot liquids is a highly debated topic amongst home brewers. While reinforced vinyl may technically 'work' in a brewing setup, we cannot recommend it for hot liquid transfers as most vinyl tubing is not food-grade approved nor is it rated for use up to the near boiling temperatures you may be using. It is said that off-flavours can also leech from the vinyl, especially when the tubing is new. This leeching increases at higher temperatures.
Thermoplastic tubing is also fairly popular for hot liquid transfer but it is completely opaque, making it hard to view the liquid inside. Thermoplastic is also rated to only about half the temperature of most silicone tubing and is not as inert.
If you're looking for the best grade tubing to use for brewing, use silicone. It's the number one choice in pharmaceutical, medical, food, and dairy (milking) use and is not costly when you consider all of its benefits.
One thing to be careful about when brewing is pressure. Hoses that are not reinforced with fabric should not be pressurised, especially with hot liquids. When a silicone hose is heated, it can get a little soft and is easy to rupture when pressurised, for example by a pump. If you pump wort or beer, or move wort or beer using compressed gas, you need specify a fabric reinforced hose. As long as the reinforced hose is silicone, you can treat it like you do your non-braided hose. Viper Performance can manufacture to order any bespoke diameter hose and length and even apply a wire stainless steel helix to make a flexible hose.
