Sterilization

[Leinie]

I'm just wondering about what people do to get things ready for the sap run, what you use to sterilize your stuff etc.

I bought some tubing last year,to connect 2 or 3 taps to one 5 gal pail- what is a good way to sterilize these 5 - 8 foot long tubes ?

How often do you sterilize your collection buckets ?

How about bulk storage barrels ? how long between cleaning ?

Thanks for any help.

[Jec]

If you turn your bottles on their sides or on their tops that will sterilize the bottle as long as the syrup is above 180F. I will clean my tubing at the end of the year.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Take the tap lines and put them in a big pot and boil. You dont need to cook them just bring to a boil and your good. Or do nothing because in a matter of hrs they wont be sterile. It cant hurt.

[Brent]

One the question of tank cleaning, as the season gets going
run a finger around inside. If it feels slippery then the crude is forming a slime layer and you need to clean. Failure to do so will result in darker syrup (which some people want) and if you're unfortunate as we were last year, and get the wrong kind of microbes growing, it will make ropy syrup. You take a spoonful out and a long string of rope like stuff keeps running off the spoon ... with the spoon level. It might even empty the spoon. Voila ... ropy syrup. We tossed about 40 gallons of it last year. This year we'll check our tanks every day. If they get bad the pressure washer comes out.

[Brent]

One the question of sterilizing sap. Try boiling it for about 6 hours :D

[TF Maple]

If you want to use bleach water for sterilizing stuff, once again, here are the amounts of bleach and water to use.

Bleach water should be 200 Parts per Million strength left in contact for 1 minute to sanitize anything. That solution is one half ounce of 5.25% bleach to a gallon of water. If you have hard water you might want to double it to one ounce to a gallon of water to make sure you have at least 200 ppm of chlorine. That double strength would be one part bleach to 128 parts water.

[adk1]

TF Maple, why is that? And I would assume that you rince twice after. Would you do this for the tanks as well?