Passivation

[Merz69]

Does anyone regularly passivities their equipment ?

 

[Jayjay1976]

Does anyone regularly passivities their equipment ?

That is a bit of a controversial subject. My understanding is that exposure to oxygen in the air will take care of it anyway so I don't take any effort at all to help it along, and over the course of ~65 batches I've never seen any evidence of corrosion that would indicate that I should.
YMMV.

 

[MaxStout]

My understanding is this is more important for aluminum than stainless steel. If you have a new aluminum kettle, just boil water in it for about 30 minutes and that will create a protective oxide layer inside (you'll see the metal turn kind of grayish). It doesn't need to be done regularly, just once when it's new, and again only if you scoured the insides. For stainless, the metal should passivate on its own due to air exposure.

Others may say you do need to passivate stainless, with some claiming you need to use an acid. I've never done it, and never noticed any off-flavors in beers brewed in new ss kettles.

 

[Golddiggie]

IME, the only time you really need to passivate stainless is after it's welded. I've used a citric acid mixture to do this with success. Citric acid is easy to come by (in powder form) and is safer than nitric acid. Using it in a hot solution does the job quickly too.

 

[Sumtinwitty]

I think passivating is vitally important unless you are using type 316 stainless equipment.
I posted a very amateurish video on youtube following the ASTM passivating guidelines

Always clean your equipment with TSP before passivating and I recommend rinsing with a 5% baking soda solution after the initial drain and rinse to stop any further reaction