boiling

[the old guy]

HI

I AM SOMEWHAT A NOVICE TO MAPLE SYRUP. I STARTED MESING WITH MAPLE SYRUP SIX YEARS AGO AND AM NOW TRYING TO TAP NEARLY 150 TREES. I HAVE A HOME MADE EVAPORATOR MADE WITH CONCRETE BLOCKS AND LINED WITH FIREBRICK. IT BOILS GREAT BUT I HAVE A FEW QUESTIONS--I HAVE THREE PANS AND DRIP SAP INTO ONE THEN TRANSFER TO ANOTHER AND FINALLY TO THE THIRD PAN. HOW DO I KNOW WHEN TO TRANSFER PAN TO PAN? IS IT BETTER TO HAVE JUST ONE PAN DIVIDED INTO SECTIONS OR SEPARATE PANS? ALSO THIS YEAR THE FINISHED SYRUP WAS ALMOST ALL DARK AMBER--IS THERE ANY SPECIAL WAY TO GET A LIGHTER GRADE? THIS YEAR'S SUGAR CONTENT OF THE SAP MEASURED FROM 1.4 TO 1.6. HAD TO BOIL NEARLY 58 GALLONS OF SAP TO GET ONE GALLON OF SYRUP--DO YOU THINK THE INCREASED BOILING MIGHT HAVE MADE THE SYRUP DARKER?
THE SYRUP IS REALLY MUCH BETTER THIS YEAR BUT THE BOILIG TIME IS SO LONG. ANY HELP OUT THERE?

LOOKING TO IMPROVE

THE OLD GUY

1550 KUBOTA, 150 TAPS WITH BUCKETS
NEW SUGARHOUSE, HOME MADE EVAPORATOR 45" X 30"

[Fred Henderson]

The long that it stays in the evaporater the darker it will be. Get it in and out as fas as possible. Basicly mine is a flat pan with 3 sections. Sap comes in at one end (rear) flows to the front , then middle and flows to the rear, and then last channel and flows to the front when the syrup is drawn off. All the while it is flowing it is getting heavyer. It stays in the last channel until the hydrometer says it is syrup.

[ennismaple]

Fred's right. The faster you get the sap from the tree and evaporated into syrup the lighter the colour. Temperature plays a role too since higher temps mean more bacteria growth in your sap.

Have you tried using a siphon to transfer the sap/syrup from pan to pan? If you set the bottom of each pan at exactly the same elevation you can put a siphon between pan 1 and 2 and from pan 2 to pan 3. We use a copper pipe shaped like a U with a valve and rubber tube on top that allows us to create the siphon by manually sucking the sap into the copper tubing (before the sap is hot of course!) to keep our finishing pan at the same elevation as our main evaporator.

This may help with your colour and will also reduce the amount of ladelling you have to do.

[VA maple guy]

Hi old guy, I transfer sap from my flue pan to my syrup pan with a scoop.
I made a fair amount of light to medium this year.You should only need two pans, three pans seems like some extra work. A divided pan is better than two or three pans, but you should be able to make light syrup with your setup. Your trees might have as much to do with the grade of syrup as the way you are boiling it. You did not say what size your pans are. Is your syrup pan smaller than your other two pans? My syrup pan is about 1/3 the size of my flue pan. The reason it should be smaller is you want to be able to draw off syrup several times during a boil. I simply lift off my syrup pan pan two or three times during a boil, that reduces the amount of time it spends over heat, that should help you make lighter syrup. Your low sugar % won't help your problem either. What kind of maples are you tapping, it sounds like reds to me from the sugar %.
Gerry

[Toblerone]

This is my third year boiling with 5 pans over a concrete block arch. We usually make light amber the first two or three boils that we do, then some medium amber, then dark amber, then grade B. This is the method we use:

At first don't bother moving sap from pan to pan to pan. Just keep adding fresh sap to each of the pans. Until the concentration gets high enough, there is no danger of darkening.

Once you have boiled down about 70 or 80 gals of sap in your pans and the sap starts to take on color, then consolidate from three down to two pans by ladleing or dumping. Now fill the empty pan with fresh sap to the proper 1" or so level. So now you have sap in one pan, and concentrate in the other two.

Let things cook, adding sap only to the pan that was emptied. Cook until the level drops in the two pans with concentrate. Then consolidate again from two pans down to one. Then fill the empty pan with fresh sap to the correct level. Now you have two pans with sap and one pan with concentrate.

Let things cook more until the concentrate cooks to very near syrup.. about 6 to 6.5 degrees above boiling point. Then pre-filter (I use restaurant grease filters) this concentrate into your finishing pot. Then fill this pan with fresh sap. You now have 3 pans all with low-concentrate sap and the process repeats for however much sap you are boiling that day. Just keep dumping what you "draw-off" in the finishing pot and finish it all off together, filter, then bottle.

Hope this helps,
Dave

[the old guy]

GERRY

WE TAP ONLY SUGAR MAPLES. THIS HAS BEEN AN EXTREMELY POOR SUGAR CONTENT YEAR FOR US. WE COLLECTED NEARLY 1700 GALLONS OF SAP AND ONLY MADE ABOUT 28 GALLONS OF SYRUP. WE KEPT TRACK OF THREE TREES THAT HAD A LITTLE OVER 2. THEY WERE THE ONES WITH A BLACK GROWTH COVERING THE TRUNK AND FULL OF WOODPECKER HOLES. WE HAD A BRUTAL SUMMER AND ABOVE NORMAL TEMPS IN JANUARY. YOU THINK THAT AFFECT SUGAR CONTENT OF SAP?

THE OLD GUY

[the old guy]

I JUST SPENT THE GREATER PART OF THE DAY CLEANING MY PANS. I FINALLY USED 80 GRIT SANDING DISKS ON AN ELECTRIC DRILL TO CLEAN THE OUTSIDES. :cry: THANKS TO YOU GUYS I AM USING CLR TO CLEAN THE INSIDES. I HAVE A HOME MADE EVAPORATOR AND CLEAN UP IS A BEAR. I AM REALLY CONSIDERING THE PURCHASE OF THE LEADER WSE 2X6. ANYONE KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THEM?

1550 KUBOTA, 150 TAPS
DONE FOR THE YEAR
THE OLD GUY

[Fred Henderson]

The bad thing about the WSE units is you can not reverse flow with them.

[VA maple guy]

I'm not sure about the black stuff on the trees. None of my sugars have any real dark bark, but i've seen it on sugars elswhere. You would think the trees with woodpecker holes might be a little low if the damage was done early in the season and you had sap running all over the place.
what does the damage look like? Is it a few big holes or rows and rows of small holes? I may be corrected here, but i think a hot summer won't affect the sugar much. If you had a lot of overcast days during the summer, that may have lowered it some.
Gerry

[the old guy]

GERRY

THEY LOOK JUST LIKE A SUGAR MAPLE AND THE SAP FLOW IS USUALLY MUCH BETTER. THE WOODPECKER HOLES ARE IN LITTLE ROWS AND THE TRUNK IS A LITTLE WET BUT NOT REALLY WITH SAP ALL OVER. WE AT FIRST WERE RELUCTANT TO TAP THEM BUT WHEN WE FOUND THE SAP WAS MUCH BETTER BOTH IN VOLUME AND SUGAR--WHY NOT? THE PAST SUMMER HAD RECORD 90 DEGREE TEMPS (OVER 100 DAYS) AND MANY OF THEM WERE OVERCAST! THEN THIS JANUARY ONLY 1 OR 2 DAYS BELOW FREEZING. MOST OF OUR TAPPING WAS DONE AFTER FEBRUARY 14.

THE OLD GUY

[forester1]

If the holes are in rows, they are from sapsuckers. They can find the sweet trees. The black is probably mold or fungus growing on leaking sap.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Sure content here was the worst I had ever seen. Around 54 to 1 it appears. We had lots of sun last summer, but one of the warmest winters on record and I think that was the biggest factor. I will know for sure in 10 years as I am watching it closely, but seems these warm temps killed the sugar. My reasoning for that is the farther north you go, the harder the winter and the colder the temps, the higher the sugar content. Guys in Maine get nearly double the sugar content out of red maples that I get out of sugars and producers in Wisconsin running less than 30 to 1.

[Toblerone]

Yeah, sugar content is very low this year. We are getting around 60:1 ratio this year. Last year we had about 37:1, but that was on different trees. I decided to let those trees rest this year since they were hit pretty hard by that ice storm in '04. I shouldn't have tapped them in '05, but I was unaware then just how extensive the damage was.

[John Burton]

the leader wse can reverse flow but you have to disconnect the front pan and spin it 180 degrees not sure how much extra gasket material you would have to have on hand... i would reccomend finding a good used 2x6 be patient they are out there i bought my patriot used for 2 grand complete blower preheater stainless base stack included or talk to either the maple guys or bill mason either could come up with an affordible alternitive. good luck...