Sight glass problems

Frige said:

I[...]Talking to Bobby by email he said that it was probably from soaking to long in oxyclean. [...]

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We are increasingly aware that some isolated local water chemistries, coupled with alkaline cleaners such as PBW and/or Oxiclean are more likely to cause crazing/cracking issues in polycarbonate when soaked for long periods of time. We say "water chemistries" in a general way because we are yet to identify exactly what elements in water are the problem but reports of crazing is ALWAYS attributed to PBW/Oxiclean use coupled with long soak times such as overnight or 24 hours plus. We've done exposure testing with several unique water supplies and cannot demonstrate the problem. One user that had crazing/cracking problems retested exposure with carbon filtered tap water and was unable to repeat the problem. Therefore, we know that "something" in water that is removable with carbon filtering is a major catalyst in this problem. Although 5-star chemicals, the makers of PBW, continue to state that PBW is safe for polycarbonate, they have admitted verbally that there may be a crazing issue with long exposures. Unfortunately, they refuse to update their documentation to reflect that.

Bottom Line: Brewhardware does NOT recommend exposing our sight glasses to PBW or Oxiclean solutions for more than an hour or so at a time. Users that wish to perform extending soaking for heavily soiled brewing vessels are advised to temporality remove the sight glass assemblies and plug the hole with a small rubber stopper from the inside.

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