Ice handling?

[SapSipper]

Sorry, I'd imagine this has been asked a million times, I searched the site but didn't find an answer so here it goes.

Ice in buckets, throw on ground or boil it?

Of course I'd love it if ice is known to be pure water without any sugar in it.

Experts?

Raging boil last night! 12 degrees in Wilton, CT. All buckets filled to top and frozen solid. :-(

[Kev]

I probably should not even reply since I suspect my knowledge level is about even with a half way competent filter washer....but I am going too anyway :)
I only keep the ice if its going to get real warm for a couple days. then I keep the ice in the buckets to keep the new sap colder longer.(many times moving the ice to buckets that get a lot of sun.)
I do not have a sap hydro nor a refractometer. but my taste buds say there is no or nearly no sugar in ice. the exception is a HARD freeze then most or all the sap is froze. but the 1/4 to 1/2 in of ice on top sap is seems sugarless.
but do not take my word for it. let someone that really knows pipe up.

[Tweegs]

I’ve been running a bit of an experiment.
Since I drag a trailer around behind the tractor to gather, I have room for a 106 gallon tank along with my regular pick up tank. When gathering after a hard freeze, I’ve been tossing all of the ice in the extra tank.

On the days where there was only about a quarter inch or less of ice in the buckets, I just tossed that ice in a spare bucket and brought it in the house to thaw.

When we get a bit of a thaw, I’ve been testing the sugar content of the melt off in the large tank. Wednesday, we got about 2 gallons of 2.5% out of that ice.

Testing the water in the bucket after it thawed showed .3% and went down the drain.

I expect that the sugar content of the ice in the large tank will drop as more of it melts off, when it drops below 1.5%, it goes on the ground.

So based on what I am seeing right now…toss the ice if it is a quarter inch or less, save anything bigger and use it to keep the sap cool in your holding tank.

[3fires]

Since my buckets were frozen i was wondering about this myself. I tasted the sap, real sweet and sticky. I tasted the ice, not sweet whatsoever and not sticky either. I used it to wash the sticky off my hands. So, I'm thinking there's not much sugar in that ice. We had a pretty hard freeze and out of 3" in the bucket, half was frozen solid.

[christopherh]

I keep the ice. Last test with my refractometer showed the ice was .8 but think it varys with how hard of a freeze you have. The other day most of the buckets were frozen solid, so I'll let it melt or bust it up and throw it in the tank.

[Sugarmaker]

Gathered sap last night. Lots of ice and slush. strained all the sap, dumped the ice and had 275 gallons of 4% sap.
SM

[BryanEx]

So based on what I am seeing right now…toss the ice if it is a quarter inch or less, save anything bigger and use it to keep the sap cool in your holding tank.
This is very interesting Tweegs. I never though about the amount of freeze affecting sugar content. My test results have been similar to yours for 1/4" (approx.) but I've never tested solid freeze up separately. New personal experiment for this year!