White "Webs" in Dandelion Jelly?

Hi everyone!

This year I made dandelion jelly for the first time. I didn't have enough sugar on-hand when I first made the batch, and the jelly didn't set. A few days later, per the pectin instructions, I mixed another packet of pectin crystals with the rest of the required sugar, and cooked that back into the original batch of dandelion jelly. All jars and lids were cleaned and sterilized again before filling with the corrected batch of jelly. Jars were then canned in a water bath for 10 minutes. All lids sealed properly.

The jelly set this time, but after a few weeks sitting at room temp in a dark cabinet, I'm now seeing white "spiderweb" looking things in the jelly. I opened a jar, and am not seeing any evidence of mold or any strange smells. The white web things are solid, but fragile, and feel gritty when crushed.

Any idea what these are, and whether the jelly should be considered contaminated? I can't seem to find anything like this on the interwebs...


Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

That's odd-looking, to be sure, but the first thing that comes to mind(strictly a guess, here), is that some of your sugar crystallized.

The first thing I thought of while reading that was cheese crystals but I suppose crystalized sugar makes more sense. If it doesn't stink, I'd taste a tiny bit and see what my tongue says, but I know that not everyone is as incautious as I am.

Clearly a crystal of some kind, but what kind, not sure. I'm inclined to believe the sugar hypothesis, but doubt I'd risk my health on it.

Her picture is hard to see, but it seems to look the same: https://blogs.extension.iastate.edu/answerline/2015/07/09/jam-and-jelly-problems/comment-page-1/

Hmm, the sugar crystal theory could make sense. I definitely had to cook everything longer than I wanted to try and fix the jelly, and am wondering if overcooking has caused the crystal formation. Also, there was quite a lot of sugar required for this recipe, since there is no added sugar from the dandelion flowers, so perhaps it was too much sugar for the pectin and one or the other did not dissolve properly.

The cheese crystal comment is also interesting - we have very hard water (about 250ppm), and I wonder if it's possible that high level of calcium is reacting with something. (This is my first time making jelly in this location with this water source, so I don't have a baseline to compare to.)

I might keep an eye on these and see if the little formations continue to grow. If so, I'll probably just toss them and wait for dandelion season to return next year.