BrewFlo dispensing gelatinous mass

[Joe S]

Anyone have this experience?

I am not talking about the usual sediment from the keg or bottle. This is a clear gelatin from the keg that floats on top of the pour. I can take a fork and lift it out and place it on the counter. It is usually 1 to 3 inches in length and ¼ inch in diameter - gelatin from the keg and extruded thru the tap. I use both the Primer, and granulated sugar when I don't have Primer. It seems to be most prevalent when I use the Primer. I have started keeping track of which I use and when the gelatin appears. My guess is that the Primer is not totally dissolving and reacting into the gelatin, but I can certainly be wrong.

Any ideas on how to avoid this?

[Thagomizer]

@Joe S:

I am confused.  It sounds like the floating gelatinous mess appears before you add the primer.  If it appears in the droid before kegging, the primer cannot be the culprit.

There are several approaches to priming your brew:

1. Add the primer in bulk just before bottling/kegging.  (Usually not recommended due to stirring up the trub.)
2. Fill the bottles and then add the appropriate amount of priming sugar to each bottle and then seal.
3. Fill the BrewFlo kegs and then add the priming sugar (30g dextrose or the BrewArt priming cylinder), then screw on the cap with the keg spears inserted.

I use methods 2 and 3 without the problems you have described.  I hope this helps.

😀 Happy brewing.

[Joe S]

I do #3 with the BrewArt priming cylinder, or table sugar. I let it sit for a few weeks. I put it in the BrewFlo and (sometimes) the gelatinous mass comes out.

I never have a problem with bottling, #2, using table sugar.

 

 

[Thagomizer]

@Joe S,

OK.  We need to pin down whether the BrewFlo priming cylinder or the 30g of table sugar was the culprit.

Although I have only used the BrewFlo priming cylinders a few times (I am too cheap to pay extra for them.), I have not had a problem with them.

However, if you get a series of successes just using 30g of dextrose for keg priming, I would consider the problem solved.

Please keep us informed.  I would like to solve the mystery of the gelatinous floating mass.

😀 Happy brewing.

[Joe S]

OK. I have some brewing in the Droid soon. I'll try Dextrose instead of table sugar. 

I weighed a BrewFlo priming cylinder at 37 grams, so I've been using 37 grams of table sugar. But I should use 30 grams for Dextrose and table sugar (not in the same keg)?

[Thagomizer]

@Joe S,

The description of the priming cylinder on the BrewArt web site is "30g" of sucrose.  There is little effective difference between sucrose and dextrose as regards to brewing.  However, dextrose is a simpler sugar and seems to work better in brewing.  Sucrose is (C12H22O11) whereas Dextrose is (C6H12O6).  

That your weighing of the cylindrical priming cylinder yielded 37g makes me suspect that the extra 7g might be from some sort of binding agent to sustain the cylinder of granular sugar into a solid cylinder.  This is pure speculation on my part.  I still suggest using 30g of either sucrose or dextrose in lieu of the BrewArt priming cylinder to settle this question.

🙂 Happy brewing.

[Joe S]

TL;DR It looks like the extra sugar I was adding causes the formation of gelatinous material.

I looked thru my rather incomplete journal notes and did some experiments. The gelatinous mass formed when I couldn't get the Brewart Priming Sugar and used table sugar instead. I had weighed the Brewart Priming sugar at 37 grams so I used that amount. I also fiddled with the amount up to 40 grams. So that is 23% to 33% more sugar than recommended.

As an experiment, I used StarSan sanitized pint jars with 1) half pint of water and 2 tablespoons sugar, 2) half pint beer and 2 tablespoons sugar and subsequently a sanitized quart fermenting jar with BeerDroid beer (only a pint, but I cried a bit at the noble sacrifice...) and half a BrewArt Priming cylinder. The water and sugar didn't do anything of note. The beer and sugar formed a jellyfish like gel structure - kinda cool looking when I shined a flashlight thru the beer. The fermenting jar essentially confirmed that the extra sugar starts the funky stuff happening.

While my experiments are not rigorously scientific, it is enough to convince me to use the recommended amount of sugar (30 grams)