sugar sand settling after several months

[Cake O' Maple]

This was my first year filtering my syrup, as I was planning on selling it. [Man, is filtering a pain!] Anyhoo, it took about an hour and 3-4 prefilters to filter about 2 gallons of syrup; there was a lot of "sludge" which I understand can happen some years. I put my setup into the oven set on low to keep it all hot. I stopped using the orlon filter after reading on here that only several pre-filters did the job just as well. Of course a lot of you know that isn't so; now I know it too!

I was running my tail off during syrup season, and sealed my syrup most times into 1/2 gallon mason jars. After the season was over and I slept a bit, I re-heated, tweaked the brix, and bottled. I reheated in a stock pot set in a water bath in a larger stock pot, and preheated a coffee urn for bottling. I decanted off the top of the settled jars. Sometimes I had sugar sand show up immediately in the smaller bottles, and figured I had let it get too hot, tho I didn't know when or how.

Yesterday I got into some of my boxes to bring bottles to people at church interested in purchasing syrup, and was shocked and dismayed to discover just about every bottle had sugar sand at the bottom. Not much, maybe an 1/16" dusting in most, a little more in some.

WHY?!?!

Was it from poor initial filtering that finally settled out? Was it from overheating when re-heating? It didn't get over 190° as far as I know. (canner only heats to 180 and was pre-heated in any case, took it to 187-188 in waterbath)

I want to avoid this next year.

Opinions? Experience? Thanx.

[vtmapleman]

I would expect that when you reheated the syrup you created niter/sugar sand - I always refilter should I have to reheat - just don't want to take a chance.

[jmayerl]

Whom ever told you that prefilters alone work just as good gave you bad information. You should have a orlon filter under your prefilters, they do catch a lot of small stuff(sugar sand) that is hard to see. Yes you will lose more syrup but, you will have to decide if that's what you want. Also I would suggest using DE mixxed with your syrup. It binds to the impurities and allows for easier filtration. Use flat filters rather than cones. Also anytime you bring syrup over 190F sugar sand will develop. This can usually happen in a coffee urn by the heating element unless it is jacketed.

[halladaymaple]

Hi all

I now use a siro filter right off the evap and goes directly to bottler. Once im ready to bottle i take the syrup up to 185-190 max and run it through the siro filter again with some filter aid. I let it cool to 180 and botle! no longer have syrup that forms niter or sugar sand.

That said if your ueing cloth filters, defenetly use pre filters wth orlon filter right off the evap. Store it in the cofee urn and when your ready to bottle re-heat up to 180+ and refilter again with pre filter and orlon. It is my finding that the hotter the syrup the more nitre is released the clearer your syrup will be. I used this method before i had my lapierre siro-press with great sucess.

Best of luck to you

Darrell

[maple flats]

As was said, use flat filters, Orlon under and 3-5 prefilters on top. You say it is slow, are you filtering hot? If not hot it slows to a snail pace. Cone filters are only using a very small portion of the filter. The DE , better known as filter aid (FA) helps a lot. Just mix a 1/2 cup/gal for refiltering. When filtering off the evaporator the amount depends on several things relating to how much sugar sand you have, but with flat filters, err on the heavy side. Filter aid is cheap for what it does and as syrup flows thru a flat filter the FA traps the sugar sand and keeps building up on the filter, making a better filter as it does. In a filter press you would try to use a little less because the space where the FA builds up gets filled and then you need to change filter papers, this is not the case on a flat filter. The built up filter cake is filtering the best.

[Cake O' Maple]

Thank you for the replies, everybody!

I do use a flat filter; I rigged up a contraption using a full size hotel pan, a grid cooling rack, 2 U-shaped dealies with threaded ends and a bar across the ends to attach the dealies to the cooling rack so it could be suspended, and and an eye-hook thingie on each u-shaped dealie to hook to the end of the pan, and s-hooks to suspend it from the sides so the rack doesn't tip sideways. (these darn technical terms...) I turned the oven on to "warm" (which is 170 on my oven), and stuck the hotel pan in the oven for filtering, to keep it warm after finishing it on the stove inside. It still took forever and a day to filter through.

I didn't think about the DE; I will definately try that next year!! I can't picture how it binds the impurities--does it clump up and allow the syrup to flow around it through the filters? Could someone try to describe it for me, please?? :emb: Will it still flow from one pre-filter to the next when I remove one? The sludge I had was across the whole surface of the flat filter, maybe 1/8+" thick. It stuck to the pre-filter when I poured the remaining syrup onto the filter below when removing the filter, but pu-lenty of sludge went down to the next one.

I'm not sure what you meant by the heating element being "jacketed," but there is a cylindrical depression in the bottom of the coffee urn that is all metal--no coils, etc. I pre-heat the urn with water, and dump the water just before adding the pre-heated syrup so the urn won't over heat the syrup where it touches that area. Double-wall SS coffee urn to help keep it at temp. Love the no-drip spout!

How in the world do you guys re-heat to temp, filter again, and still have the correct brix and temp to bottle the syrup?!? It's enough to stop a girl from selling it, and just telling people to deal with the nitre....

[jmayerl]

The DE does not cause clumps but rather binds to the minerals and other impurities. It is a very fine powder and you will not notice it looking size wise any different.

Using the urn that you have you will always have some problems with niter reforming. There are 2 types of coffee urns. A jacketed urn has the heating element in a water jacket outside of the urn. The element heats the water and the water heats what's inside. A non jacketed has a exposed element that heats by direct contact. If you use the later to heat syrup you will ALWAYS have some niter form because the elements heat to much higher than 190F and cause the syrup that directly contacts the element to reform niter.

[maple flats]

When filtering with a flat OR cone filter you need to keep an eye on it. The orlon filter is on the rack, then 3-4-5 pre-filters are put on top, depending on the amount of sugar sand you have in the product. Then heat the syrup to 190-200 (it must be hotter than bottling temp or bottling will create more niter). Be sure to re check density just before you bottle. Then put as much syrup as will comfortably fit on the top of the stack of filters. As the flow slows you carefully remove the top pre-filter and let the next layer filter. If you don't remove the plugged layer the filtering will take far too long. Adding the FA to the hot syrup and stiring it in, will make allow layer of pre filter to last longer, because it builds a filter cake of FA and then filters even better. Many producers, even large ones use flat filters. I think fellow producer Mountainvan might have pioneered using FA with flat filters, or at least he was the first one I heard of.
You might try searching his posts about filtering, he gets crystal clear syrup and sells at several farmers markets in both jugs AND glass. Glass shows all.

[Paddymountain]

I start with 6 cone prefilters in my orlon filter, they are suspended in an old drip coffee maker , which in essence has a hotplate under it not the central element like in a percolator coffee pot. We heat our syrup to 190, dump it in the pot ,put the lid on and when the probe in the pot under the filter is 190 ,we start bottling. when the first prefilter plugs we pull it and put it in a tupperware container to let it drain. We pull maybe 2 more prefilters til we're done bottling. When done all the filters go in the tupperware container til the next morning, we may get almost a pint from that, we either use it for ourselves or put it in the next batch to filter. We bottle almost all glass and even after a year there's nothing on the bottom.
This past season we started running 1 prefilter off the evaporator, what a difference, cut filtering time considerably.