Flextech’s specialist guide to brewery hoses

Specialist brewery hose assemblies come in all sorts of lengths and bore sizes, suitable for a variety of applications. Using the correct hose is essential to guarantee the quality of your product isn’t compromised and you meet all the industry standards. These hoses will not only stand and resist the daily rigours of the brewery process but will also ensure that with Brewflex’s non-tainting liners, users will be satisfied that the product they intended to make will taste the way they wanted it to.

There is a vast variety of hoses available on the market, all differing in quality, price point, flexibility and purpose. Opting for an off-the-shelf option might leave you with the wrong type of hose, impacting the quality of your end product. This is where a specialist hose supplier like Flextech comes in. Within a brewery, different types of hoses will be necessary at different stages of the process or for different types and sizes of brewery setup. Flextech’s Brewflex® hoses are expertly designed to be versatile throughout the entire process, making them the ideal solution for any brewery.

To help you better understand brewery hoses and their applications, we have put together a specialist guide addressing all the key points.

How to choose the right brewery hoses and connections?

At Flextech, we have conducted extensive research before finding the perfect material for our brewery hoses, and we landed on butyl. This material is extremely resistant to alcohol (up to 96%), caustic (2.5% concentration in regular cleaning applications), and steam cleaning up to 130°c. The estimated lifespan of a butyl brewery hose is between 3 and 5 years, however, with the right treatment and maintenance, they could see 7 years. Brewflex® specialist Paul Robinson has a few maintenance tips that could help them see the upper end of that life span. Never bend the hoses past their bend radius, always make sure to hang them after cleaning them to allow full moisture drainage and always put end caps on your hoses to protect them from insects and external contaminants.

Different types of hoses are designed to work under pressure or under vacuum for different applications. This will determine if you should be opting for a “delivery hose”, a “suction and delivery hose”, or a “crush-resistant hose”. When looking for a new brewery hose, keep in mind the STAMPED method, which will help you filter through the many options available. STAMPED is an acronym that stands for:

  • S = Size – length and diameter

  • T = Temperature – of the product transferred and the atmosphere of the external environment

  • A = Application – what will the hose be used for

  • M = Media – what is being transferred

  • P = Pressure – of the product being transferred

  • E = Ends – fitting type

  • D = Delivery – how soon the product is needed

Most rubbers available on the market will be able to cope with up to 85 degrees. Our Brewflex® hoses can operate up to 120 degrees continuously. They can also operate with 96% alcohol, have easy glide covers for manoeuvrability as a standard, and are generally lighter and more flexible in terms of bending radius.

Selecting the right material is crucial to maintaining high-quality standards, and choosing the right connections and end fittings is an additional vital step in the brewery hose selection process. At Flextech, we only use Shawlok™ hygienic fittings, made from 316L Stainless Steel and designed specifically for our hoses for a completely permanent swage.

By choosing specialist hoses, such as Flextech’s Brewflex®, you can reduce the risk of faults or contamination during the brewing process, ultimately saving you time, money and worry in the long run.