Anyone getting (got) a Synek?

[sablesurfer]

Some updates on the Synek. I did get my back ordered cap last week. As I was planning next steps...to bag my own beer, or go get new beer...I wondered just how cleanable the caps are.

They are all plastic fittings and because they are spring loaded to keep in pressure, you cannot just dump them in some sanitizer or oxiclean. They fittings 'appeared' to be screwed into the cap. They are, but that doesn't buy you anything in the way of cleaning.



This is what I mean by they are spring loaded. Both the CO2 and beer out valves have a plastic sleeve that has to be depressed.



Once I got that, then I tried to just put them in the sanitizer that I was making for my bottling day. Seems to get things through. The interesting thing will be if I wanted to soak these in oxiclean, then I would feel like I'd have to do this a number of times between soaks.

 

[sablesurfer]

I also got a new regulator. Kinda mad since I have two machines, and I told the guy on the phone, multiple times. Here is the only difference I can see between what came with machine and what they sent.

See the teflon tape?

 

[sablesurfer]

Anyway, today was bottling day for a barleywine because I need that glass carboy to age my imperial stout in. I decided, with the new cap, the cap I put back together, lots of extra bags...I would try...

1) One bag forced carbed using the machine. Why not, I figure just attach the back, fill to ?? pressure, take it off and let it sit for a day. They try again, let it sit, then put it in the machine?

2) One bag 'bag' conditioned. Previous poster mentioned about the bag splitting, but I have no idea how that would be possible. If they are not splitting from getting CO2 tank applied to them, then then shouldn't split under normal CO2 volume conditions from, well, conditioning. I set my priming sugar for 1.5volumes.

3) The remaining gallon ('ish) got bottled as normal and will be my base line. I actually expect this to take a long time to carb up because it is close to 11% and was aging for about 3 months now.

Here are some pics.

This is how I filled the bags, I did flush with CO2 as they were filling and the bag opened a bit.



Here are the results. Not sure that the bags actually got a gallon of beer. They just didn't seem to plump up enough?



Here is the forced carb one. I will let it sit at room temp, will hit it again at the line between low and med on the dial. Then pop into the machine.



As for, did it really get a gallon, do we have any fluid dynamics engineers that can tell what a gallon of 11% barleywine should weigh?

 

[sablesurfer]

Last update today...yeah, ALL the hose joins seem to leak easily. I mentioned before that I already applied a hose clamp to the tap shank connection. Today as I tried to add some pressure to my homebrew in a bag, this happened. Check the pressure setting.

 

[whovous]

I am happy to see you documenting all of this. It will give me a better idea of what to expect when I finally try this myself. Let me try to give this a positive spin:

1. The sanitizing routine does not look all that hard, and I don't think you should ever need to OxyClean if you sanitize before and after every use. Chances are good I won't sanitize at all, but that is only because I have not yet had a batch go bad on me due to lax cleansing standards.
2. The regulators might have internal differences, or the later one might be manufactured to a higher tolerance. Sending one instead of two is not so good, but it is a curable error.
3. I think these links will let you sort out the weight of an 11% ABV solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_by_volume
http://beer.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/by-volume-by-weight-conversion-formula

But that is all I've got. A gallon of water weighs 8.33 lbs. A gallon of pure ethanol weighs 6.59 lbs. Your "gallon" appears to weigh just under 5.25 lbs. That is .63 of the weight of a gallon of water, and .80 of the weight of a gallon of pure ethanol. Without doing the math above, it is safe to say you are well short of a gallon there. That is not a life or death matter, but neither is it a good thing.

And the leak at the CO2 hose? What kind of shoddy materials are they providing here? Assuming you've used another clamp here, and further assuming that clamp worked, can you tell me what kind of clamp you used? I may as well have some on hand before the unboxing ceremony.

I look forward to learning the results of your forced carbing and bag aging experiments.

 

[sablesurfer]

Ah...well I should have asked Yooper..."It takes about 10-14 days to fully carb up." I have never force carbed before. I filled bag with CO2 at Med, refilled it next day because it had absorbed some into beer. It was a bit squishy again today, but I went ahead and attached the back to the machine.
Got over excited and poured myself some flat beer. Oh well, mixing it with a New Belgium Abbey to get carbonation and the flavors match pretty well.

 

[whovous]

Can you continue to force carb, or is it too little too late? It sounds like force carbing is not much faster than bottle carbing.

 

[ross_daly]

I filled bag with CO2 at Med, refilled it next day because it had absorbed some into beer. It was a bit squishy again today, but I went ahead and attached the back to the machine...

It sounds like you might be force carbing room-temp beer - is that right? Unless you're at a MUCH higher pressure than usual it seems like that may be putting unneeded pressure on your bag. Also it sounds like you're disconnecting the co2 between fills - am I correct? If so then that will take a very long time to carbonate. You want to leave the gas on until it reaches equilibrium, that is pretty hard to do if you're taking it off the gas often.

 

[sablesurfer]

Ok, update on force carbing. There are no numbers on these dials. Just Low, Med, and High. The literature doesn't recommend High. I have been carbing the barleywine for just over two weeks now at the bottom end of Med. I figured, if Med was recommended for regular beers, then I'd see what low Med would do. (Edit - once it was in machine and on permanent pressure, I still had to turn the dial because as CO2 was absorbed the needle would drop[?])

Here is a pic of the barleywine. VERY low carbonation. Could be ok in a classical style way, but I would want to at least see some head during the pour. Hmmm.



Now, if the bottles of this actually prime, will be a pretty darn good barleywine!

 

[sablesurfer]

Ok, I pinged with a question that was a good one, so thought I'd add a couple more pics.

Can you just hook the bags up to your own keg system? That way use decent 1gal growlers on your system.

Well, I don't think so. Well not with just the straight equipment you get with a bag and cap. Not even having the bar's filling connections would work. (I don't think, but others please clarify if I have it wrong.)

There are two connectors on the back lid. They are different sizes. The beer out is bigger than the air in. At first I thought you could just hack up a bar filling kit to get the connector, but they actually fill through the beer out, so you wouldn't get the smaller connector to hook to your system.

Here are pictures of the connectors. If these are standard, then that would actually be kinda cool...but I have no experience with the world of quick disconnects other than the stainless ones on my brew system.

This is the lid and male side:


This is the smaller air in connector attached. Not great view, but it is a quick release with that little aluminum paddle depression button.


(As you will see, I do have leakage at this very low pressure. One of the reasons I am returning these machines.)

 

[sablesurfer]

Ok,
I am done with these. Sending them back for a refund. There is just way too much that doesn't work for me. Recently the company started replying to my questions much quicker, but that isn't fixing the issues I have with them overall.

After this coming weekend I won't be able to get any more pics of the workings on these machines. I am going to take the refund and use it to get a zymatic instead.

 

[sablesurfer]

So, all my machines (*2) have been shipped back. Just before I packed them up, my barleywine "blew the keg". The last glass out of that machine was all foamy and and pretty much was all co2 foam at end of 8oz pour.

As I was getting them ready to pack up, I noticed that the barleywine still had some volume of beer left. I just poured out all the remaining beer and got ~4 8oz pours out of it. Keep this in mind when your syneck runs out at the tap.

 

[whovous]

Hey Sablesurfer, did you use soapy water to highlight that leak in #38, or did it bubble like that all on its lonesome?

I think I have figured a few things out. First, the guy on Redit who reported his bag splitting from the pressure of carbing his homebrew was using the standard cap, and not the cap with the connectors. That latter cap has a release valve. So, he must have been using sugar, and not the CO2 tank. The bag split because the normal cap has no way to release excess pressure.

Second, it looks like CO2 leaks are possible almost anywhere in the system. The two ends of the hose are only the most obvious choice. You also need to make sure the connector snaps onto the fitting good and square or it can leak from there. Also, if you do not screw the cap on squarely, it can leak from there. Finally, if you are especially unlucky, you may even be able to get a leak from the brass screw-on regulator fitting. Or at least it seems to screw on differently from one time to the next.

I re-used a bag and filled it with as much of my latest APA as I could get into it without owning the filler kit. I think I got more than three quarts, but who knows. I hooked the bag up to the CO2 tank with the pressure turned up as high as it would go, and set the temp at 32F. Pressure is always somewhere in the Medium range. I find if it drops down a little, that I can turn the regulator off and then back on again to get a small boost in pressure. I don't think this means I have a leak, but I am really not sure about that.

Anyway, it takes its own sweet time carbing up. Yesterday was day 9, and after taking smallish samples in previous days, I decided to take a full pour. I sat the glass down (no tilting or pouring down the side to reduce foaming) and set the Perlick to pour at full pressure - which was not a whole lot. By the time the glass filled I had a little over an inch of head. I am going to leave it connected over the weekend before trying again, but it was not too bad last night. The big problem is that the best temp for forced carbing (32F) is not a great temp for drinking an APA. I let it sit to warm up a bit, but that meant the head dissipated.

I think I will turn the temp up to about 40F for the weekend, so that the next pour is closer to drinking temp. Synek is sorta working for me, but I don't know that I'd recommend it to others.

One other thing: How much brew gets left in the bottom of the bag depends on just how far the dip tube winds up from that bottom. It naturally wants to curl up a little, and if you let it slide to the left or the right, rather than pointing straight down, it will be that much further from the bottom. The problem is that it is very hard to tell just how close to the bottom you are. I suspect that if you fill using the filler kit, then you can feel where the hose is before you add the beer. I did not yet have the kit when I filled mine, so I could not really tell how close to the bottom it got. I guess I will find out soon enough.

 

[sablesurfer]

The bubbling at the hose was just straight hooked up to the machine. I would assume that it was just the proteins/sugars in the beer making bubbles possible?

Actually, you reminded me to post a followup/mea culpa thingy. It seems that for over two years now, when I walked into my local paintball place and asked for a CO2 refill....they were just using compressed air. This was a big cause of weird head behavior in pulling a draft because compressed air acts more like nitrogen...duh...and cascades out of the beer leaving no bubbling behind in glass.

I have since found a place, the one place that does the hyrdotesting in town, that will fill paintball canisters with REAL!!!! CO2. Sigh. So beware, the 'kids' (used in an almost derogatory tone) at the paintball places will just do whatever they are taught without thinking/analyze what you are actually asking for.....

 

[whovous]

I don't understand how the liquid found its way into the gas line. The fluid level should have been below the cap given that you filled below the tap adapter; Neither can I imagine any weird reverse suction pulling fluid toward the compressed air tank. No matter, as yours is gone and mine does not do it. Still a mystery though.

As for the compressed air - Wow. Just wow.

 

[sablesurfer]

I don't understand how the liquid found its way into the gas line. The fluid level should have been below the cap given that you filled below the tap adapter;

.....errrr......right. Beer leak would have been beer...(too much multi-tasking today)...duhr. So, there might have still been sanitizer in the lines.

 

[whovous]

I guess that is a great new way to test for leaks. I just wish there was a way to be a little more confident in the leak-proofitude of this puppy. I don't think mine leaks, but I am not real certain of that.

 

[apache]

I know I'm a bit late to this thread, but my experience with using the Synek for homebrew has not been very good. I've split two bags(one with the standard cap, the other with the connector cap) while they were carbing in bag, and the regulator has had issues. I know that they're going to be putting out thicker bags for that, but I think I'll be either selling mine and getting a kegerator, or just keeping it around in the case that they actually get breweries on board with using their bags to distribute beer.

 

[whovous]

Synek has released a new setup video.
[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUSblOXyfp4&feature=youtu.be&mc_cid=f5c5b9af09&mc_eid=cb3ad1acc2[/ame]
I think it does a good job of itemizing all the different ways it can be made to leak. I took mine apart and put it back together again, just to be sure, and I managed to get a little more pressure on my force carb. After two weeks, it is pretty much fully carbed and tasting pretty darn good.

But that standard cap... I have no idea why they even ship it, since it is not meant to be used for anything. Of course the real ones are on back order, which does not help much.

 

[sablesurfer]

Synek has released a new setup video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUSblOXyfp4&feature=youtu.be&mc_cid=f5c5b9af09&mc_eid=cb3ad1acc2

You cannot go to just any paintball place and get 'food' grade CO2, I am proof that they have been giving me compressed air for a while when I asked for CO2.

Yep, that is how I had mine set up.

 

[whovous]

Ahh, but was it food grade compressed air?

The only setup change I made was to use a wrench instead of just finger-tightening the nut.

 

[whovous]

I've decided to bring this thread back to life, as I have several comments to make:

1) The map of available beer sources has been hugely improved over where it used to be. Previously, it seemed like way over 90% of their listings were "coming soon". Now, every map listing actually serves beer in the "Synek way".

2) That's the good news. The bad news is that the overwhelming majority of their sources do Synek growler fills. Almost none of them fill the Synek cartridges. I live in DC, and there seems to be fewer than ten cartridge fill sources in a fifty mile radius. Every one of them is a brewery. I have a wonderful beer source less than two blocks from my house, but they do only growler fills and not cartridge fills. It seems like they've abandoned their reason for making this puppy in the first place.

3) I am getting a lot better at forced carbing. My BrewDemon fermenter has a cheap integral tap, so I fill my cartridge with CO2 (not sure that really does any good, but why not), then remove the cap and run a tube from the fermenter to the bottom of the bag. I hold the bag at an angle, as that lets me get more beer into the bag than I get if I just hold it straight up.

Once the bag is as full as I can get it, I screw on the functional cap. This continues to be a major pain. You have to align the threads on cap and cartridge very carefully before screwing the cap onto the cartridge. The process is greatly complicated by the fill tube that is meant to run from the inside of the cap to the bottom of the bag. You simply cannot turn the cap very far before that tube hits the side of the bag and won't let you go any further. A little bit of spillage seems inevitable when you do this.

Once the cap is on, I connect the cartridge to the two lines on the Synek, set the temp to 36F, and turn the CO2 up as high as I can stand. Generally speaking, it won't go more than a little bit into the red no matter what I do, but my impression is the higher the better for carbing purposes.

Most recently, I've carbed a batch of Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde. I only made this beer because I need later generations of Conan yeast for the IPAs which were previously almost the only thing I every brewed. However, while I may not have wanted such a "light" beer, this last batch turned out amazingly well. A week or so on the Synek produced an incredibly thick, creamy and delicious head, and the beer has a wonderful mouthfeel as well.

I just finished a cartridge, and I managed to get almost every ounce out of the bag before it tapped.

Summary - while I would not buy this toy again, because the expected huge variety of available brews has completely failed to materialize, I seem to be getting the hang of forced carbing. I don't want to go full keg because my batches are too small, but this gives me some really nice results without much fuss.