Sugar Sand

[brookfieldmaple]

Has anyone had sugar sand issues this season?
I have to take my front 2 cross flow pans off every night to soak with distilled water to remove all the sugar sand build up. We boiled for 7 hours last night, and I thought that I'd have to shut down before we ran all of our sap through to clean the pans. That's the longest boil we've had in years. We've made 8+ barrels of all very Light syrup, I'm hoping to make some medium to jug before the maple tours next weekend.

[40to1]

Huge crop of sand (and other stuff) this year.
When I'm cleaning the filters I feel like I'm cleaning a baby's diaper. (yeech)...

[Dennis H.]

Yes it is a major issue this year.

I almost lost a syrup pan because of it. Luckily I was standing there watch and slammed the float full open to flood the pan. I little scrubbing and elbow grease and good to go.

I was going thru tons of filterpress papers and DE for my 2-3 gal batches!
This is why I may have not made anything lighter than Med this year.