Canner faucet that flows without foaming.

[TunbridgeDave]

Has anyone found a good valve for canning syrup. I want to add a second valve to our 20 year old SB canner. It has a nice valve on it made in Italy that flows smooth no matter how far you open it. I've tried the valve that Bascoms has, which is just a stall cock for the vaccume system in a dairy barn. Hot syrup comes out kinda turbulent and the jugs are full of foam, even with just a couple inches of syrup left in the canner.

[PerryFamily]

I too have the same problem. It drives me nuts.

[maple flats]

I use an electric hands free valve from The Maple Guys to bottle. It came with 3 nozzles but I soon decided to just regulate the flow by adjusting the ball valve I left ahead of the hands free. Each size jug or bottle seems to have a max. fill speed, the bigger the container the faster I can have the flow. As a container reaches the top I adjust if needed, open more if no foam and vise versa. If there is a valve that won't foam I am not aware of it.

[mountainvan]

I tip my bottles slightly and let the syrup run down side. cuts back on the foaming.

[Amber Gold]

I made one of these and found it to work the best out of everything I've tried. You can open the ball valve most of the way with a nice laminar flow so you can fill jugs fast. I've tried various hands free devices and found foaming to be a problem.

http://leaderevaporator.com/p-21-brass-ball-valve-faucet.aspx

[TunbridgeDave]

Amber, I made a valve setup like that for filling drums during the season, but I can't imagine trying to fill nips with it. Years ago you could buy an all brass valve that had a tapered hole which got smaller at the tip. This kept the flow nice and smooth and it wouldn't drip when you shut it off.

[tuckermtn]

I also use the maple guys hands free foot valve with a ball valve below it. once I set max flow, I can fill 100+ jugs without having to re-set flow and no foam. love it.

[TunbridgeDave]

Bruce Bascom also suggested putting a ball valve before the spigot to slow down the flow. But there's gotta be a spigot out there that works without having to do that. As I said before the one that came with my SB canner works great but I can't find another one like it.

[sapmaple]

Leader sells a canning nozzle "stainless" 1/2 NPT screws into your ball valve. It works great no foam and no drips between fillings

[Amber Gold]

If you can solder good (no pinholes), the fitting doesn't leak. Works like sticking your finger over the end of a straw. The end reduces down to 1/4" so it's the same size as the nips...works well. I have one that's all 1/2" to fill drums with...much faster.

[TunbridgeDave]

Update on faucet. I installed a second valve on the outlet of the canner to slow down the flow b4 it gets to the fill valves and that worked well to stop the turbulence. I should put up a picture. The only problem is I'm using 2 fill valves to do my canning. When you shut one fill valve the pressure increases to the other one. So ideally I need a total of 4 valves. One for each side to adjust the flow, and then the fill valve itself. There's gotta be a better way.

[eagle lake sugar]

I made one also similar to the one in the leader catalog. It necks down to 1/4" so it fits inside the nip bottles. The only thing I think I'll change, is instead of an elbow for the downspout, I would use a tee, and a short piece of tubing going up to vent it. This would eliminate the turbulence and maybe the foaming.

[psparr]

I use a coffee urn for bottling. I just put a 1" piece of 5/16 tubing into the spigot and it flows great.