Test Prop Powder Like Jelly When Dissolved

I mixed up some prop powder.
Almost all of the test prop powder dissolves, but theres bits left over that look like little bits of jelly floating around. Of course these gets filtered out but what is it, am i losing test because I cant dissolve it all properly?

5% BA 15% BB concentration being used.

Undissolved test (prop) powder should not look like jelly, in my experience. It should look like…well, undissolved powder. Little white chunks.

I don’t know what would look like jelly and you certainly don’t give us much to work with. Care to put some more detail into your explanation so that people can actually help you? My post is already longer than yours, which should tell you something.

Also, just so you know, 5%BA is WAY more than is necessary, and is just asking for a painful product. You’ll be fine keeping your BA at 2 to 2.5%, and you’ll feel a lot better, too.

Sorry for the quick post, had the stuff mixed up and was in a rush for an answer.

20 grams of test prop
150ml cotton seed oil
30ml BB
10ml BA

Once its all mixed I filter into vials and then cook the vials for sterilization.

When I used this concentration, there is some undissolved material at the bottom of the large mixing jar. Say last 20mls it gets into.

Why is 5% BA too much? is 15% BB ok?

I heated it up with a hair dryer, beaker was too hot to touch (temp unknown) but keept adding heat, material didnt seem to dissolve with the addition of heat so I stopped heating. But if i had to add heat to dissolve it once it cooled down it would just crash out wouldnt it?

Thanks for the response friend.

[quote]hyper24 wrote:
Why is 5% BA too much? is 15% BB ok?

[/quote]

It’s not that it’s too much (well, it may be… I’m no expert on homebrewing), it’s just that you don’t need that much. The more BA you have in it, the more injection soreness you’ll experience.

Most recipes I’ve seen call for about 2%.

That said, listen to what Cortes has to say on the matter.

Im here to learn.

On closer inspection they are tiny crystals, they crunch when I squash them with the stirrer.

But using the concentration i listed about it should be dissolving shouldnt it? or do i need heat?

Actually dont worry about me, I wasnt heating up enough.

But now my only question is, once it cools down wont the crystals crash out?

Now that you explain it a bit more, it does sound more like undissolved powder.

Okay. Don’t heat with a hair dryer. Put your beaker in a frying pan partly filled with hot water and put this on the stove on a low setting. This will be enough heat to get the powder to go into solution.

While you are correct that it should dissolve without heat, I have found that sometimes in practice heat does work to get and keep a product into solution where it would not have done so otherwise (or I just was not patient enough…regardless, it did not later crash).

Seems to me there is a range that you can go above with heat that will get a product into solution that would not have otherwise gone there, and it will not crash out until somewhere decently far below the temperature range at which it would not go into solution. Does this make sense?

If Bill Roberts reads it I’m sure he’s going to tear me a new one, but this seems to be how it works out for me in practical experience. Especially with those that are close to the saturation point. Say, something that you have trouble getting to dissolve, will often not crash unless it becomes particularly cold, but you would not have been able to get it to hold in the first place without significantly increasing the heat. I’d actually like to hear thoughts from others on this.

Second, your brew is not really 100mg/ml but I suck at math and I’ll leave it up to you or one of our more mathematically inclined members to help you out there. However, if you still can’t get it to go into solution, you’ll want to add more BB to bring your brew up to 20%.

And yes, 5% BA has been done many times, but it is completely unnecessary. Save your BA and your buttcheeks.

Some reading that Ive done and a figure that Ive used is powder x .85 = ml displacemnt. If I recall correctly as its been a while. 20gr powder = 17mls displaced. So about 97mg/ml.

And I surely agree. 2% BA is more than enough. Even a bit less has never been a problem. I have never gone under 1.5% personally.

My question to the op would be,does he fully understand the difference between BA and BB and the rolls they each play?

I only ask this because they asked about why is 5% ba too much and 15% bb is ok?
if not Ill explain my understanding from reading up on it.

BB is Benzyl Benzoate simply put it is a solvent used to mix the products and used as a preservative so the oil wont oxidize as fast

BA is Benzyl Alcohol and is used here for its bacteriostatic properties
now these 2 chemicals do other things but this is basicly why they are used.

2% is enough I have read. you hear about using 5% this is painful and its used to make sure that nasties that were missed in the mix don’t multiply.
if there’s nothing to multiply to begin with then you have no worries.
I also heard about some preparations using no BA at all and being fine.

just thought I would mention is all

[quote]MaddyD wrote:

2% is enough I have read. you hear about using 5% this is painful and its used to make sure that nasties that were missed in the mix don’t multiply.
if there’s nothing to multiply to begin with then you have no worries.
I also heard about some preparations using no BA at all and being fine.

[/quote]

Good point, as usual, Maddy.

The reason you see many UGLs using a 5% or so BA ratio is because they are brewing under unsanitary conditions. Ostensibly, after filtering, and provided you do not introduce something foreign into the brew afterward, you should have a perfectly sanitary brew that should require little to no further “bug killer.” BA should be thought of more as “insurance,” than anything. If 2% is not more than enough, you are probably doing something wrong.