Do you consider the inside of a cooler porous?[/quote]
Yeah I would. Dry wall, wood, skin, etc yes I would
Do you consider the inside of a cooler porous?[/quote]
Yeah I would. Dry wall, wood, skin, etc yes I would[/quote]
A plastic cooler is porous? Is a better bottle or plastic pail then considered porous and should not be used in brewing?
[quote=“Nighthawk”][quote=“GoldenChild”][quote=“Ken Lenard”]
Do you consider the inside of a cooler porous?[/quote]
Yeah I would. Dry wall, wood, skin, etc yes I would[/quote]
A plastic cooler is porous? Is a better bottle or plastic pail then considered porous and should not be used in brewing?[/quote]
You know, I was going to go there but thought I would just stop and leave it alone. If I filled a plastic cooler with a sanitizer I would consider it sanitized. I realize that sanitizers like Starsan are “surface sanitizers” but the inside of a plastic cooler is a “surface” and I’m sitting in Nighthawk’s corner on this one. Also not sure what drywall or skin has to do with it.
I would still say that plastic can be a porous surface and that mash tuns tend to contain scratches at least mine does I have a metal paddle. Its just a mash tun clean it and move on. Its just examples of things that can be porous even though they might not look like it. Plastic can be porous. Dont care if you agree or not im just saying.
I think wood and drywall are bad comparisons to plastic cooler walls. Those materials are VERY porous. You could theoretically bleach yeast on Gypsum board, it’s just that that much contact time causes the board to swell-up and eventually disintegrate. Wood takes an extraordinarily long time to absorb cleaner, you can’t just soak it; you have to scour it; as in sanding. That scouring removes the surface infected material along with the mold. Mold removal on wood studs/joists/rafters often involves sanding via “Sand blasting” where instead of hard to clean sand they use pellets of dry ice. (pretty cool huh?)
For substances like cooler wall, the mold really can’t penetrate too well beyond the surface; it’s a question of whether the nooks and crannies holding the mold are smaller than what the solution’s surface tension can get in. Filling the cooler a little and scrubbing will be more effective than filling the cooler completely with bleach and waiting. Like your grandma always said, elbow grease is the best cleaner.
With that rational, SS is also porous. Not only with scratching. I worked on with a welder while building a large electrical substation. The large conduit the electricity flow through (technically electricity flow around the wire/pipe, not through it) is aluminum pipe. Before welding the connections together he would heat the pipe with a propane flame to get the moisture out of the metal.
But we don’t want to split hairs here. 
Although I can’t find specific info, all I can find points to HDPE not being porous.
+1. At least it’s not very porous - certainly less porous than an oak barrel, but more porous than glass? And I also think that bleach treatment is routinely used on some porous surfaces - concrete floors and block walls, for example. Maybe it’s not perfect, but…what is? To the OP, I would give it a PBW soak and scrub, then rinse thoroughly and sanitize.
I win!
My socks are porous…
So is my underwear
