new evaporator - syrup has bad flavor

[hounder]

We set up a new to us evaporator this weekend which we boiled water and vinegar on Sunday after setting up to clean out. We flushed it after we were done with about 150 gallons of clean water. We boiled for the first time last night. We had about 500 gallons of sap which was from Monday and yesterday. We only drew off about 5 gallons of syrup, but the syrup has a funny taste to it. Not good, almost chemically and I filtered 2 times and it is still murky. Even left some in a mason jar overnight and it did not settle. Should we drain what we have in the evaporator and start fresh again to be sure we are rid of whatever caused it? Sap is crystal clear in the flue pan. It is a 4x12 so it will be a big loss, but don't want to keep making nasty syrup.

[Sugarmaker]

Could be metabolic syrup flavor. Set that syrup aside, do not throw out yet . Drain and flush equip and keep boiling. Hope it will improve.
Regards,
Chris

[mathprofdk]

I know pretty much nothing (2nd year), but I had a similar experience boiling down all of 10 gallons last week. Search for a thread on metabolic flavor, and there's some research by Dr. Tim. It suggested boiling to 235 and then adding water to get it to the right density. I had a funky flavor my first week, but this worked. It'll make the syrup darker, but it removes the flavor.

[hounder]

We are new (2nd year also) and I hadn't had time to look at old threads on Metabolic, but appreciate the info. Funny thing is that this is the lightest syrup we have made, but figure it is the difference from batch boiling to drawing off. I will try as you suggest and hopefully see improvement.

[PerryW]

Metabolic is usually at the end of the season.

Is suspect that your first syrup may have an off flavor due to residue left in your saplines. Depending of your tubing cleaning procedures, it could be chlorine or just spoiled syrup that didn't get rinsed out. Since it is your 2nd year, your tubing was clean last year, so you didn't experience it.

Depending on how bad it is, you can probably mix it in with your commercial syrup at the end of the season. I bet it will clear up on its own.

[hounder]

We only had a bit of line last year, had about 150 trees and half were on buckets. I washed all lines with a little bleach and flushed with water. We now have about 500-600 tapped all on lines and most lines are new. We also have sold our first run of sap while we were getting the evaporator set up to a fellow who said it made some of the nicest syrup. It has to be in the evaporator? what more can we do to clean it out? We boiled 6 hours last night. Consider it cleaned out now?

[sjdoyon]

Hounder,

We also have a new evaporator and new lines. Our dealer recommended we dump the first 100 gallons of sap and then sweeten the pans. We lost a few hundred gallons of sap but the first boil tasted good.

[hounder]

Thanks for the help. We drained it out last night.