Paint it red

If you visit a craft brewery today, you might notice a subtle shift in the color scheme. Alongside the tangle of blue, transparent and brick red hoses transporting beer and water to and from shiny steel fermenting tanks, there is a new variety in the brightest red imaginable. This is the Beerdial hose, recently launched by Trelleborg.
The color is intended to signal as loudly as possible that Beerdial is different. “I wanted a red like a Ferrari,” explains Alexandre Varloteaux, Product Manager for Trelleborg’s hoses. “When you enter a brewery, I didn’t want a red hose in the middle of other red hoses, because this is not the same hose.”
What makes the hose unique is its proprietary inner lining material. Named SKM by Trelleborg, it is less porous than the ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) or nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) used in standard hoses. This minimizes the oxidation that can dull the aroma of beer during transfer.
It is also tasteless and odorless, which means there is zero risk of tainting beer, and is durable enough to withstand repeated clean-in-place cycles using abrasive chemicals like caustic soda or peracetic acid.

A hose for (almost) everything

If that seems like a lot, that was the intention when Trelleborg chemists started working on the new proprietary polymer SKM formula back in 2021. The idea, Varloteaux says, was to open the way for “a hose that is able to do almost everything.” The composition is known to only a handful of people.
While the inner lining is innovative, the reinforcement and outer layer use time-tested Trelleborg formulas. The yarn and embedded steel helix used for reinforcement was chosen to give the best flexibility and pressure resistance, while the cover material was selected for its abrasion and chemical resistance.
This means the hose can handle the rough and tumble of a brewery or other production facility, when hoses might be dragged over floors, trodden on, and disconnected and reconnected.
Brewers clearly realize that the hose they choose can make a difference to the quality and taste of their beer.
Trelleborg has continually reordered stock of the most popular 33-millimeter diameter as customer demand from both small breweries producing as little as 2,000 hectoliters per year and from much larger breweries, exceeded expectations.

What’s next for SKM?

Despite the name, Beerdial is suitable for the suction and discharge of all foodstuffs except fatty and oily liquids. It can be used to transfer alcohol at concentrations of up to 96 percent.
Beyond the beer industry, the demand so far has come primarily from wine producers, for whom reducing oxidation is also a priority. The brewing industry was chosen to trial the first SKM product because Trelleborg hoses are less dominant in the industry than they are in the dairy and wine industries.
Trelleborg is now working on an updated version of its Vinitrell wine hose using the SKM lining. This will have lower working pressure than Beerdial and will be corrugated to make the hose easier to handle.
While most breweries are modern production facilities, wineries can be hundreds of years old. This means hoses need moving more frequently, often pulled over rough stone floors, through doors and around corners, making ease of handling and durability paramount.

Ahead of the regulators

Beerdial launched five months before France’s Directorate General for Competition Policy cut the number of authorized constituents for rubber that can come into contact with food and beverages from 42 to seven. This was no accident. While the original impetus for SKM was to make a compound resistant to abrasive chemicals, during development Trelleborg made sure it was futureproofed against foreseeable regulations.
“We are lucky enough to have one of our chemists on a food regulation commission in France, so we have a lot of information at the EU level, and of course at the French level, about what the next regulations for food are going to be,” Varloteaux explains.
Because it meets EU and French regulations, the hose can be sold in Germany and Italy, despite not yet being certified under local regulations in these countries. Trelleborg is nonetheless seeking certification in those territories.

From beer to oil

One hose group that cannot be upgraded to use SKM are those designed for vegetable oil transfer. For these, Trelleborg is now working on a new compound impermeable to phthalates, a plasticizer used in low-cost, PVC materials.
Trelleborg’s existing Alikler G hose for oil and fat transfer is already free from phthalates but Trelleborg wants to eliminate any risk of a hose being contaminated by phthalates used elsewhere in the processing of an oil.
“Our target is to have zero phthalates,” Varloteaux says. “We need to have 100 percent perfect chemical inertia so a hose cannot contaminate and cannot be contaminated.”
Trelleborg has been working on this hose, which will be called Olidial, since 2023 and it is expected to be released in 2026.
The innovation does not stop with SKM and Olidial. Trelleborg is also developing an upgraded dairy hose combining the features of the Citadel and Lactadel hoses, which will offer better resistance to fatty products and chemicals.
These innovations show that to stay ahead of regulations, improving hose durability, and eliminating contamination require changing more than just a hose’s color.
Writer: Richard Orange
Photos: Trelleborg