Did I ruin my taps?

[sugarin' in the hood]

So I used vinegar to clean our small stainless batch pan and it worked well. We pulled our taps and I put them in a 5 gal. bucket with vinegar to clean the taps and let them sit for a week. When I looked in the bucket there were vinegar crystals on the plastic taps so figured it was time to clean them up and put them away. The vinegar seems to have eaten through the galvanizing on the metal taps as flakes of material fell off the metal taps while cleaning the taps. What I am wondering now is if the metal taps were ruined or not? In the past I used a little dish soap and have not had issues. What is the best way to clean the spiles?

[spencer11]

i dont know if you ruined them or not, but i just throw all mine in a 5 gallon buck and spray water in there while im washing my tanks and buckets and it seed to work fine.

spencer

[PerryW]

vinegar is used to loosen nitre when cleaning pans. I just soak my spouts in a 5% unscented chlorox solution for a few minutes, shake them around and rinse several ties w/ hot water.

[happy thoughts]

I'd say you probably ruined your taps. Vinegar might be fine for stainless, but acids shouldn't be used on reactive metals like aluminum, zinc and tin since it will eat away the metal. IMHO your first order of business should be to find out the base metal used for the taps. Plain steel or iron is going to rust and corroded galvanized could leach zinc. Either may affect the flavor of your sap though my real concern would be that your corroded taps contain exposed lead.

For metal taps, the safest way to sanitize them would be to either boil them or just use bleach and a few minutes hang time.

[maple marc]

Boil, but do not use bleach, especially for aluminum taps. I learned this from experience. Bleach is very corrosive to aluminum.

[Russell Lampron]

I rinse and dry mine when I wash my buckets and then boil them to kill any bacteria just before I tap.

[adverdsmith]

Boil, but do not use bleach, especially for aluminum taps.