chasing syrup

[twitch]

Getting ready to chase the syrup out of the my 2.5 x 8 any pointers or advice would be great it seems pretty easy just feed it with water and draw till it is all water ?

[PerryW]

Yep, just feed with water and keep boiling until you get tired of it.

[Gravel]

I know people have done this with success but I didnt have much luck when I tried it, hope it works out for you!

[mapleack]

It works but you still lose syrup! I drain my flue pan, plug off the syrup pan, refill the flue pan and head tank with water, then boil and keep adding the sweet to the syrup pan until it gets low. Then I drain the syrup pan and use the finisher to get it all to density. No sugar lost to dillution from chasing it with water.

[SeanD]

I didn't find this method to work either. In the early stages, things move along, but sooner or later that 0% sugar/water is going to be running into your front pan and your gradient will break down. Zero percent water is not going to "push" 66.5% syrup down a channel, it will mix and you'll just keep re-diluting the last of the syrup, boiling off the water and re-diluting it over and over again.

I've since switched to the method mapleack uses.

Sean

[PerryW]

I didn't find this method to work either. In the early stages, things move along, but sooner or later that 0% sugar/water is going to be running into your front pan and your gradient will break down. Zero percent water is not going to "push" 66.5% syrup down a channel, it will mix and you'll just keep re-diluting the last of the syrup, boiling off the water and re-diluting it over and over again.

I've since switched to the method mapleack uses.

Sean

Yes, you reach a point of diminishing return when chasing with water. I have only used this method when the evaporator is filled with low-value sap. It just allows you to run for another hour or so to get that last takeoff. If you boil much longer than that, the water makes it around into the front pan.

I always ask myself,"How much time am I willing to waste dealing with this foul-smelling sap to get one or two gallons of Commercial?" Also, 85% of my evaporation takes place in the back pan, so I'm wasting 85% of my wood when boiling only in the front pan.

[Gravel]

I usually take what my dad drains out of his big rig and finish that off in my smaller rig, gets all of mine out and some of his then I drain it and finish in my turkey fryer if its worth it, if its mud I just toss it!

[ennismaple]

Yes, you reach a point of diminishing return when chasing with water. I have only used this method when the evaporator is filled with low-value sap. It just allows you to run for another hour or so to get that last takeoff. If you boil much longer than that, the water makes it around into the front pan.

I always ask myself,"How much time am I willing to waste dealing with this foul-smelling sap to get one or two gallons of Commercial?" Also, 85% of my evaporation takes place in the back pan, so I'm wasting 85% of my wood when boiling only in the front pan.

Bingo!!! We only push ours through at the end of the season when the syrup is crap and you're sick of boiling. After an hour or a little more of putting more wood in the fire box to push out a few pennies of sludge that won't filter, looks like road tar and tastes worse you decide to cut your losses and shut down for the last time.

[SevenCreeksSap]

I did what Mapleack does too. scooped out every bit of sweet from the rear pan and put it in the front pan, turned off the valve between the pans, and built the fire at the front of the firebox to finish boiling down the sweet until its close. Kept dumping water in the feed tank to keep several inches of water in the rear pan.
Just finishing off some concentrated sweet on gas now. I havent been able to get a good finish from the evap pans yet.

Our weather was so goofy this year we didnt get bad sap. It was running clear then warmed up and was 85 this week. now the buds are out and all the taps are pulled.

[adk1]

I did this for my last boil. added water to my tank and it keep feeding. IT worked pretty well. Once My temp wouldnt get to the 219 for en extended period, I knew I was done. I got another quart of finished syrup out of my 2x6 when I did this.

[MillbrookMaple]

I agree with most of the posters. Chasing will always leave some sugar behind. I always take my evaporator down to bare minimum and then drain the flue pan in to buckets. I then fill the flue pan with water and just keep dumping buckets in the feed side of my syrup pan till they are gone. Now once I get to the end of the buckets I just dump the syrup pan into my gas finisher and finish the rest. Before the finisher I used to keep drawing off and putting back in the other side to break down the gradiant and take it down as far as I could safely. Then I would finish on my canner. I burn oil so I can take things a little farther without worry of burning up my pans. I just flip the switch off and it stops boiling in about 5 mins.

[Brent]

I've been reading on here about chasing and sugar loss for a few years and this year the light turned on.

After the last regular boil we plugged the ports between the two pans, drained the flue pan into pails, then pumped fresh well water up into the head tank and let it fill the flue pan. Lit the fire and fed the flue pan sweet into the far side of the syrup pan adding a couple quarts at a time. It worked like a charm. We had almost 50 gallons of
32% in the flue pan and got roughly 20 gallons of syrup finishing it this way. Best recovery we've ever finished with. Just don't let the head tank
boil dry.

By the way, the first few hours of boiling the well water in the flue pan, that picked up so much sugar from the sand in the flues and sides that it tested
out at 2.4%. We never did boil that down though. As we boiled the front we dumped a bunch of crude out of the flue pan. I'm expecting this will have pretty well cleaned it up by time we knock it down for final cleaning.