Food safe plastic for brewing..?

[ReenaRibena]

Hi everyone, I'm new here so please forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered.

I read somewhere a while ago about various types of plastic that are food safe, and those that aren't. One of the things I've seen is people saying it's a big no no for using things such as water buts because of the chemicals from the plastic leaching out into the brew ect.

I was in my local B&Q store the other week and notice they do a 210L water but for around £25, brilliant I thought, then I remembered reading that you can't because the plastic isn't food safe. So... I was reading somewhere today and came across a website which gives a list of food safe plastic, PP, PETE, LDPE and HDPE. Now I've noticed from the B&Q website that their water butt, the one I was looking at is made of 100% HDPE, the one listed as food safe. I could be wrong, but am I right or wrong in thinking that if it's made from HDPE plastic then it can indeed be used? Save an awful lot of money, as well as making a big brew too. Thanx :)

 

[Personal91]

Hi everyone, I'm new here so please forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered.

I read somewhere a while ago about various types of plastic that are food safe, and those that aren't. One of the things I've seen is people saying it's a big no no for using things such as water buts because of the chemicals from the plastic leaching out into the brew ect.

I was in my local B&Q store the other week and notice they do a 210L water but for around �£25, brilliant I thought, then I remembered reading that you can't because the plastic isn't food safe. So... I was reading somewhere today and came across a website which gives a list of food safe plastic, PP, PETE, LDPE and HDPE. Now I've noticed from the B&Q website that their water butt, the one I was looking at is made of 100% HDPE, the one listed as food safe. I could be wrong, but am I right or wrong in thinking that if it's made from HDPE plastic then it can indeed be used? Save an awful lot of money, as well as making a big brew too. Thanx :)

The thing to do is to be sure of all of the components eg the dispensing tap inside aswell, If it is food safe then it should be fine. The real question is are you ready to brew that much ? i thought i would be at first but since i have bottled a simple 23 litre brew i realised how much there was!

Unless you have alot of thirsty friends you may tire of that perticular brew aswell.

i started a thread on here a long time ago about using food safe buckets and youve just reminded me about it. let me update it and i will post the link for you.

i found a well priced listing of food grade buckets on ebay - and i think 25 off litres of a brew is enough of a batch for starters right - especially if you are going to be making 5-6 batches at the same time !

 

[ReenaRibena]

Thanks for your reply. I've started brewing again recently, I first tried it when I was a teenager as my uncle was an avid home brewer, I thought I'd try it again myself as we spend so much on bottled wine these days that it's more appreciated and cheaper to brew your own than to buy it.

In respect to the food safe issue though, I was looking in my local Pound Stretcher yesterday and they have 65ltr storage containers with lids on, I took the liberty of looking for the food safe sign and it's there, the wine glass and fork symbol. I've not bought any yet as I already have two brews on the go but at something like £9.99 for two I think it's quite a bargain.

Oh and on ebay they also have the 210ltr (or something very close) blue storage bins, it's food safe and I think it comes with taps too for around £50 inc delivery.

 

[MarkBowie]

Does this include using cheap bins to soak bottles in? I was just going to make a bicarb solution and leave the bottles in it for a day to soak the beer remains out the middle and pull the labels off. I just got a couple of cheap kitchen bins from home bargains.

 

[terrym]

I first started homebrewing beer about 50 years ago and you couldn't buy 'proper' FVs then so I ended up using an orange plastic dustbin and continued with this, with scratches from cleaning insides and all, for about twenty five years before I stopped (having recently restarted). There is absolutely no way said dustbin was food grade, and I'm still here in seemingly good health. So my view is if you can buy food grade stuff for contact with your brew you should, but for secondary tasks like soaking bottles don't worry about it.

 

[Spoon]

The type of plastic doesn't necessarily indicate whether it's food safe or not. It's a combination of material, manufacturing and additives.

For example the material has the be food safe (HDPE, PP etc), the manufacturing process has to be upto standard, for example you can make a boat from HDPE, but it wouldn't make the boat food grade because the molds probably weren't cleaned thoroughly between boats. Another example, I worked on a plant making LDPE in pellet form which was sold to manufacturers, when it left us it was suitable for making into devices that could be implanted (i.e. as good as it gets), even though most of it probably got turned into plastic shopping bags.

Thirdly the addition of 'plasticisers' affects it, these are the chemicals which make plastic go rubbery for use in flexible hoses etc.

It's also temperature dependant, a beaker might be food safe with orange squash in it, but not food safe with boiling tea (or wort) in it. Typically anything HDPE is probably food safe to 60C, whereas PP is food safe to 110-120C.

I'd second that 200l+ is a lot of homebrew though! Especially as you'd also need similar sized mash tuns, HLTs, kettles and something to keg it into! And if someone did dob you into the police it'd be hard to argue that 200l is homebrew for domestic consumption, that's a small brewpub!

 

[Fil]

when moving to brewing volumes larger than 5 gallons you start to need pumps or lifts/hoists to move it about. and that involves new expense and complexity into the brewing and preparation cleaning and sanitation.