Bioling

[5050racing]

How long can you keep adding to a flat pan?can you boil let it cool overnight and start it back up the next day? I know it will be darker but is it better then.letting the sap sit in the snow in drums I try not to store sap longer than 4 days in snow packed around my drums. Sorry for the miss spell boiling the I and o are next to each other

[Scribner's Mountain Maple]

I would think that if you kept your batch cool at night and not freezing hard that you could shut it down each day and re-fire in the morning. I had an idea for you turkey cooker sugar makers. Has anyone ever heard of a jet-boil. They use an aluminum ring around the base of a pot to transfer the heat faster. What I was thinking was to take a 6 foot piece of baseboard hot water pipe with the aluminum fins and bend it to fit the contour of the base of your pot. That way the flame shoots up into the middle and can't escape without transferring to the pot. Just an idea, not sure if it will work, but think it should help increase your boil with less gas usage.

[Scribner's Mountain Maple]

I'm just noticing that you evolved from the turkey cooker last year. My dad used a flat pan for 20 years and it is now being used by my cousin. You can keep adding daily, just make sure to cover it so nothing can get in. Also, make sure you have enough liquid in your pan (2 " minimum) to steam off after you shut down the fire so it doesn't burn up.

[happy thoughts]

That's a hard question to answer. Basic food safety guidelines recommend keeping foods below 40F or above 140F. The area in between is the danger zone and you are likely to fall into those temps as your syrup cools down. In a flat pan there is also a lot of surface area with lots of area for airborne contamination. That said, syrup at proper density is a relatively "safe" food. The temps needed to make syrup are well above the boiling point of water and are maintained for many hours. That alone should kill anything that may have grown in there. The high sugar concentration of "finished" syrup also helps preserve it.... but lower concentrations may also provide a good medium for microbial growth, especially yeasts. Those are the conditions that are likely to be present in partially concentrated sap or near syrup. You may end up with not just darker syrup, but off flavors and more material to filter out, not necessarily niter, but dead microorganisms that have had a chance to grow while processing stopped.

I think the bottom line is to do what you are comfortable with especially since your number of taps probably means you're not selling commercially. Still you should try to process the sap ASAP. If you can cool and chill the processed sap that would be better, imho. If that's not possible, I would at least keep your flat pan covered during cool down and until you can boil again but that's just my 2 cents :)

[Mark]

Just start back up the next day. Some of the lightest syrup that I have made was on a flat pan after a few days of boiling. I think the reason was that the color does not develop until it is closer to syrup and it was not in that range until I decided to take a batch off and quit adding sap.

[maple flats]

If you cover the pan as soon as you quit boiling for the day, there is no worry. Any yeasts will be killed because of the heat, and even if some did start to grow, the finish boiling will kill it. Evaporators are not drained at the end of each boiling session (but there may be a rare exception)
Go for it!

[5050racing]

Great thanks for the help,boiling down 50 gallons now and maybe able to finish tonight.Collected another 55 gallons today!!!