Burnt sides of hotel pans

[rasento]

We made our first batch on our block arch last night. We ran 4 hotel pans for several hours, pouring sap into the cooler pans and ladling into the hotter ones. Eventually went to two then one. We stopped short of syrup and will finish on propane tonight.

All pans have some burnt sugar on the sides. The hot ones have a lot of burnt sugar on the sides. As I made the final pour into the last remaining pan, it occurred to me the syrup is in contact with the nasty stuff. We watched temps very carefully and never came close to burning the syrup. Pan bottoms are clean. I wonder if it was drips from the ladling that caused it.

Is side buildup normal for hotel pan setups? I saw pictures of a hotel pan arch with baffles blocking the spaces between the pans. Should I try to seal the spaces between the pans to keep the heat on the bottom? I previously thought the exposed sides would help with evaporation while the level was high.

My wife is the maple connoisseur, so she'll have to tell me if the build up ruined the taste. Anybody else care to predict if it is burnt tasting?

[Brent]

To avoid this you'll need to find a way to keep the flames from coming up the sides of the pans. Possibly buy narrowing the bricking, possibly by gettng a plate with cut-outs that only allow the pans to go through a half inch to an inch.

[Digger]

Ditto. Heat at the bottom only

[emo]

Most of what I noticed burning is the foam that occurs during boiling. I have nat had it leave a burnt taste to the syrup. I try to scoop the foam out using a small strainer as it accumalates in the pans that boil. Toward the end of the season, the burnt foam will start to flake off. As I reduce the sap down to one pan, I fill the emptied pans with a lot of water and as it reheats, I use the strainer or something to rub on what might have burnt to scrap off anything that came loose. I use a wire brush connected to a drill at the end of the season to get the rest off. I don't have anything around the pans inside the arch and let them sit down in especially to keep the wind off of them; I boil out in the open behind the house.

[TDVT]

We have a propane-fired rig I made that uses hotel pans dropped into the frame of the arch so they get some build up like yours.

We have had good luck soaking them overnight with a mix of water & white vinegar. Not sure how much vinegar, maybe 2 cups & the rest water? That will really loosen most of it & soften the rest for easier cleaning.

I think I got the suggestion on here on Mapletrader from someone.

[RileySugarbush]

We cooked that way for years. Dark but delicious syrup! Minimize the burning by keeping the sap deeper than you would in a flat pan, as deep as you can without too much splashing out. The hot sides are an advantage Always add sap to the back pan and transfer it forward, finishing only on the front pan . The flecks of burned syrup filter out fine. You can just rinse and leave it between batches. Consider it traditional syrup- think of pioneers with iron pots over open fires!

If you only heat the bottom you will lose a lot of evaporation rate.

[Groves]

If you only heat the bottom you will lose a lot of evaporation rate.

This.

Run them deep. They'll be essentially large drop flues. Sure, towards the end there will be no way to keep them as full, and there will be some scorching on the sides, but you can still make very very light syrup that way.

A bit of vinegar and it will scrub clean pretty easily after a soaking.

[TrentonTerry]

I just want to post some pictures of my pans to make sure I am understanding this right. These are my pans after a couple of boils. Each time I take an sos pad to them and get them as clean as I can (about 5 minutes of scrubbing per pan). Give them a thorough rinse and then put sap in them and put them into my arch. Not sure, but the surface of the black stuff is not always smooth, in some places there is a 16th of an inch of buildup that I would need to take a chisel to to get off.

Yes I have seen the black flakes come off in the syrup and they were filtered out. However it may be because we are a week into our season here that the syrup is coming out darker and darker or it could be that I am not cleaning the pans enough.

I know some other threads say to soak them overnight in vinegar (however that would be like 30 bux in vinegar a night, making it not that cost effective). And this thread says you can still make very very light syrop in pans like this.

I boil for about 8-12 hours and do about 40-56 gallons (of raw sap) in that time. (Getting that better is a research project in itself on this site). I pull off almost finished syrup twice in that time frame (as the front pan got to be pretty full).

So I just want to ask the experts as this is my first season.

[Brent]

any part of the pans that is exposed to the flames and is not submerged will get burned. Most folks using this style pan hang them into the flames from the upper lip. The sides will always get scorched if you do this. To avoid it you need a way to hang them so only the bottom 1/2 to 1" is in the flames.

Easy-off oven cleaner is the best way to get rid of this and the soot on the bottom of the pans. Spray it on and leave for 1/2 hour or so, scrub off what you can then repeat as needed.

[RileySugarbush]

That looks just the way ours used to. Don't worry about it unless you really want light syrup.

I loved that dark strong syrup I made that way. It didn't taste burnt, just dark and flavorful.

What might help you is to always add to the back pan and ladle forward. the raw sap deep in the pans will not burn as much. Get a shallower hotel pan for the front for finishing so the near syrup doesn't have as much exposed vertical walls. That pan may be a bit cooler too.

When you are near done for the day and are running out of sap, lift the back pan and dump into #2 pan, cover the opening with sheet metal as discussed here:
http://www.mapletrader.com/community/showthread.php?t=10096

We only fully cleaned our pans at the beginning of the season.

[C.Wilcox]

+1 on just leaving the burnt sugar. I just scraped off the bigger chunks with a putty knife every night until the end of the season and then I worked on getting them super clean. Mine looked exactly like the ones in your pictures, but after I pulled the taps I sanded them with wet/dry sandpaper. I used 320 to get the big stuff off and then progressively worked up to 600. It really didn't take as long as you might think and the pans look brand new.

[Groves]

We leave all of the stuff at the topish side of the pan, but do be sure and scrub briefly the bottoms and lower sides. Doing that has dramatically changed the color of our syrup towards the lighter, even with burnt sides.

Also, when the batch gets to the end, and you're combining pans, you can also just put the pan over the fire after you put a few inches of water in it. Don't put it back without water or it will turn black in 1 second. We just fill them full of water and that way the fire channel remains and we can even add some vinegar to the pan full of water to loosen the crud.

[3fires]

I have scraped off the black and left it on with no change in color either way. The syrup tastes fine either way, but the only thing that bothers me is lost sugar, all that black is syrup that will never be.

I wrapped the sides of my pans with aluminum foil and that helped with the burning, but the foil makes it difficult to remove pans in process and it burns at the edges and flakes away as well. So, I did away with that idea for fear of getting burned aluminum foil in my syrup.

Raising those small pans so only the bottoms get licked with flame would seriously slow the boil rate, it might not even boil. Mine are down in the flame, I get burned sugar on the sides, but I also get upwards of 12 gph with 3 standard steam table pans, and that I'm happy with. I boiled down 95 gallons in 10 hours last Wednesday/Thursday and finished right on the front pan.

I was using steel plate to cover the holes as I removed pans, but now just fill them with water and use for cleanup and keeping my filter pot hot and the like. I think it helps loosen the crud for the next batch as well. I clean out the bottoms of the pans on the inside and whatever loose black that will come off the sides, but don't go hog wild cleaning them between batches, if anything the black crud will act as an insulator and prevent more burning of sugar next time around.

[ckkrotz]

Our block arch is sort of just thrown together, and the pans get really black every time. We have 2 pans, and the back one is way hotter than the front... is there a reason everyone says to ladle from back to front? Our front pan doesn't boil nearly as much as the back, mostly just above a simmer. Is this as it should be? Or should we be ladling from front to back in this situation? The back one gets more black than the front one.

[RileySugarbush]

I tink you are doing it right. Add all new sap to the hotter pan and keep the front one filled from there. It's easiest to finish on the slightly cooler pan and you will get less burning wit the raw sap in the hotter one.