2nd year guy looking for a bit of help.

[hitnspit]

Ok last year i used wool cone filters. They were a B***h. For those of you that have used both wool and synthetic. Can i get some help. Now I did use the wool ones last year but they were used to begin with. Thank you.....jim

[tuckermtn]

use the cone shaped pre-filters and an orlon filter. Syrup filters the best when it is as hot as you can get it.

I used to filter right at the draw off in to a paper pre-filter that was suspended in a home-made "frame" made out of 12.5 gauge mainline wire hoop. would catch a lot of niter. would make it easier to filter the finished batches later on.

[Thiems sugarshack]

If you hold your filters over the steam it will get the hot and more flexable and seems that the syrup goes through quicker

[hitnspit]

I do use the cone shaped fillters also. I also fillter right off the drawoff in a homemade holder for the fillters. I use 2 prefillters inside of the wool fillter. Now it just went really slow. Thinking they were used maybe they had seen better days.

[Bucket Head]

I do the same as the folks above, but I put my filters and prefilters in the tall stainless steel milk cans- I beleive their ten gallons(?). The filters stay hot this way allowing for syrup to flow as best it can. I put multiple prefilters in the cone filter. That way, I just keep pulling prefilters out when I see the syrup not going down as well. They catch a lot of stuff first and their easier to rinse out than the filter. I can get a fair amount of syrup through one filter doing it this way. I also set up several cans this way so when one can't take anymore syrup, swapping a fresh one under the drawoff takes five seconds. I no longer monkey around and change filters, wash filters, and then set them up in cans while boiling. Everything is either done pryor to lighting the fire or after the fire is out. Much simpler this way. I too fought to filter syrup early on and it took a lot the fun out of syrup making! -Steve

[hitnspit]

we use a pot of really hot water and dipped in the pot just before we used it...... I think it was just well used and need to start out new this year.....

[heus]

So far I have thrown away my orlon flat filters each year and bought new. It can get expensive obviously. I think if I were to use them from year to year I would freeze them so they dont pick up off-tastes in storage.

[rookie]

my first year I bought a brand new wool filter and used the paper pre filters, it filtered slow. When I talked to Bascoms supply, they reccomended iget a synthetic filter in place of the wool, still using the paper filters and it does filter a lot faster