Taylor Food-Grade Lubricant – Red or Blue? What is the Difference?

April 13, 2020

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In food service, it is absolutely imperative to properly lubricate your food processing equipment with a food-grade lubricant that is non-toxic and contains no hazardous ingredients. Lubricating your machines regularly and with the right lubricant increases longevity and protects against wear and tear, friction, corrosion, and oxidation. It saves you money in the long run by reducing the possibility of constant repairing.

The Taylor range of lube is certified food-safe, NSF-listed and meets USDA 1998 H-1 guidelines. It’s also transparent, odorless and is designed specifically for use on all Taylor machines.

Whether you have a frozen drinks machine, soft serve machine, shake freezer or other food processing machine, you need to know which lube is the right lube to use. Heat treatment machines and standard 3 day clean machines require different lubricants.

Taylor has 2 types of lube – red and blue lube. Which to use?

To keep it simple, remember: RED for HOT, BLUE for NOT.

Both red and blue Taylor Lube is used to lubricate soft serve machines and other frozen dessert machines. Regular three day clean, non-heat treatment machines can use either blue or red lube. However, self-pasteurizing heat treatment machines MUST use the high performance RED lube.

Taylor HP RED Lube is designed to work with soft serve equipment that works within a wide temperature range from as low as 44°F to as high as 158°F. Regular food-safe lube like Taylor blue lube is not designed to be heated up like that and will be rendered ineffective. Taylor Red lube is “stickier” and more viscous than the blue lube, so it clings and adheres to moving parts and components much more effectively at high temperatures. It ensures sufficient lubrication throughout its operational cycle, which can be anything up to 14 days.

Making sure you are using the correct lube is important from an operational and also financial perspective. Incorrectly using the blue lube on a heat treatment machine runs the risk of your machine leaking after only a day or so. This is AVOIDABLE damage which therefore wouldn’t be covered by any warranty!

Cost-wise, Taylor red lube is slightly more expensive than the blue lube, but it is used less often, so the cost works out about the same. Be careful not to waste your red lube on your standard 3 day clean machines, when the blue lube does the trick.