poor man's RO?

[crawflyer]

we have a small wood stove in our kitchen that we use most of the winter and i usually keep a pot of water on it when the air gets dry. I loaded a 7 gallon stainless pot with good 3.0 (i gathered it from some half frozen buckets, leaving the ice behind) and instead of stoking the fire I let it steam away at just under boiling. it took about 48 hours to get it down to a half gallon. I then stoked the fire and boiled it the rest of the way. i made about a pint and a half of some of the lightest syrup I have ever made. It looked like weak apple juice at a little heavy brix. lol...I filtered it and canned it and may enter it in the fair!

[happy thoughts]

If it works go for it. I used to do the same when we had a wood stove though my goal was just to concentrate the sap not bring it to finish. If you burn wood you probably have a pot of water on the stove anyway to increase the humidity. By subbing water with sap you're getting a bonus.

I had a nice collection of shallow SS baking and steam pans that covered our stove top completely, most found at yard sales. You can get a nice evaporation rate even while you sleep. It's like having maple fairies come in at night that do most of the work for you :lol:. The long slow evap is what made me think of using a slow cooker since we no longer have use of a wood stove. That works pretty well, too, if you're just making small quantities of syrup.

Have a great season!

[Leinie]

My second year tapping, a guy told me an electric roaster would work great for boiling. Well , it wouldn't bring sap to a good boil, but with two of them running 24/7 and finishing every 4-5 days I made 6 gallons of pretty good syrup.

The roasters would boil water indoors, but I think being out in the cold was too much to overcome.