Jacketed Canner

[OneLegJohn]

How long does it take the 3000watt, 18 gal water jacketed canner to heat up? How long does it take the bigger 40 gal units to heat syrup up to 190F?

[OneLegJohn]

Can some one bump me to the canning thread? Sorry bout that.

[maplecrest]

my forty gallon canner takes 2and 1/2 hours to heat 40 gals.

[OneLegJohn]

Wow, that's a time commitment! Can you set temp with a thermostat, or is it a 1-10 dial?

[ennismaple]

We have just 1 heating element in our 40 gallon canner and it can take up to 4 hours to heat. It's thermostat controlled so you turn it on, go away and come back later.

[collinsmapleman2012]

thats whats nice about the water jacket canner vs. a propane one. you can set it and walk away, not having to worry about it

[Brent]

We have our 18 Gal unit in the sugar shack, right beside the RO and set the dial thermostat to 185 and leave it there.
We can then pump directly from the filter tank into the canner and it holds it at the canning temp so we can sit down and bottle whenever we get the chance. The thermostat is only accurate to about 5-10 degrees. You need to give it a couple hours when it's empty to get it up to temp and accurately between 185 and 190.

Once the water is hot you can pump in syrup at any temp and be ready to boil immediately if the syrup is hot or in 1-1/2 to 2 hours if the syrup is cool.
We set our final density in this. We normally run the density hi off the evaporator and it seldom takes more than 1/2 t 1 cup of water to get the right density for a full tank.

We got Leader to make a bit of a custom tank for us. The standard tank has Leaders name "Leader Evaporator" cut out of the top at the front and that lets out a lot of heat and moisture. Ours only has a small fillter hole at the back so it loses much less water. We still have to top it up a bit though. The stand with it's adjustable front shelf seems expensive, but in my mind, it's worth the price of admission so you can get the bottles just 1/4" under the fill spout ... especially important if you fill those *&^%# little maple leaf bottles for weddings.

We throw a beach towel over it at night to reduce heat loss. It does add a bit of heat to keep the RO from freezing.

We've never re-created nitre sand since we got this. Love it.