Brew Strong: Metals that Affect Your Beer

Where's the podcast?

Podcast not available for download?

It's on the server, these fuckers are just too lazy to update their links. You can get it here: http://thebrewingnetwork.com/m...-29-08.mp3

I guessed on the file name and I was right.

Very informative great job

2 things going on here, but basically you want to cut your hole in a way that generates the least amount of heat. Sometimes that's shears, sometimes that's a sawzall, sometimes it's a grinding wheel (pneumatic / dremel).

1. stainless steel is basically steel with chromium which keeps it from rusting. When you cut it with a carbide or steel tool, you're rubbing small amounts of steel and steel dust onto the stainless. You have to rub it with the scrubbie or sandpaper to remove the crap you rubbed on that will rust. You know all the crap is gone when you let it soak in water and it doesn't rust anymore. so soak it in water / leave it in a humid environment, and if it rusts, scrub off the rust, and do it again. When its clean, it won't rust anymore.

2. That's how to get rid of the contamination. The reason you want to use the least heat-generating method is that the other way stainless gets contaminated is when it gets heated to a high enough temperature (from dull tools / gummed up grinding wheels or tools that aren't hard enough to cut stainless), the chromium inside the steel will leech away from the heated zone into the surrounding material and leave a section of the metal that will rust. This will be impossible to scrub off, you'll have to cut it again with a cooler method. Who wants a bigger hole? more to the point, starting over is the last thing anyone would want to do.