Cloudy syrup

[Chellis Farm Sugaring]

hi everybody,
boiled last night got 7 gallons of gold,nice and lite but, and there is always a but...... I pack two pint glass bottles just to see the color and they are a little cloudy.I use a cone felt filter and 4 prefilters. I packed it at 180 deg. and fliped it upside down until cooled. my question is what caused it and how can I fix it. this site is great and I have used many ideas and suggestions and learned alot. Thanks in advance Sean

[maple flats]

Have you ever wrung the filter when cleaning it? That breaks fibers. Did you heat it any after filtering it? If you filter at 180 but then heat it to above 180 during the bottling process, you have formed more niter. The cloudy you see is very fine niter.
One thing I suggest, heat before filtering to 195 or even 200 and filter it, then maintain between 180-185 to bottle it. You can also stop at a larger producer to see if you can buy some filter aid (FA) from them (it is sold in very large bags), then mix some into the pre filtered syrup and filter as usual. The FA will remove far more niter than thefilter alone does, and the FA does not pass through into the syrup, it is trapped on top of the filters. The FA becomes the first layer of filter. It takes very little FA to work. In my 20-25 gal batches I draw off 6-7 gal, add 2-2.5 cups FA, mix and then pump it to the filter press, then I draw another 6-7 gal, add about 1.5 cups (the filter papers are already coated), mix and pump. I repeat until the 20-25 gal batch in my finisher is gone. If you do 6 or 7 gal batches you might want similar quantities. In years with little niter you can use less FA, but then late season syrup often needs more FA.

[Springfield Acer]

hi everybody,
boiled last night got 7 gallons of gold,nice and lite but, and there is always a but...... I pack two pint glass bottles just to see the color and they are a little cloudy.I use a cone felt filter and 4 prefilters. I packed it at 180 deg. and fliped it upside down until cooled. my question is what caused it and how can I fix it. this site is great and I have used many ideas and suggestions and learned alot. Thanks in advance Sean

Sean;
I am in only my third year but this year has been terrible for me with cloudy syrup. I bottled 8+ gallons last night with a brand new cone filter with four prefilters and I'm still cloudy. I maintain my temps above 180 the entire time (starting at 210) and still no good.
What surprises me is that with as many people using flat filters or presses (especially larger operations like you) that anybody uses the cones. I guess the flat filters would probably still create cloudy syrup since they operate just like a cone but the cone is so slow.
I am done with cones after this season. The question is whether I go to a flat or a press.
As I said above, I am afraid that the cloudiness will still be there with the flat and it may also be slower than I like. I cannot bring myself to add DE and slow it down further. I hope to go watch GaryR filter some with his press soon.
I have a new shack and new evaporator this year along with a whole bunch of new taps. That end is all working so well that now the filtering process is dead in my cross hairs.
I'm curious to see if you can solve this. If you try the DE, let us know about the speed of the filtering also.

[maple flats]

De will not slow it down, but will actually speed it up. You now get a layer of niter that starts to plug up the top layer as soon as you put the syrup in. With DE this niter is spread over a far thicker layer and as such allows syrup to pass faster. The DE does not plug the filter, it just makes a filter cake. The filter cake does the filtering. If after you have a filter cake layer formed, you dumped in sap without the DE it will plug quickly, but adding the DE just makes the filter cake thicker with each pour into the cone or flat filter. Give it a try, your filtering will go faster and will give clearer syrup.

[Springfield Acer]

De will not slow it down, but will actually speed it up. You now get a layer of niter that starts to plug up the top layer as soon as you put the syrup in. With DE this niter is spread over a far thicker layer and as such allows syrup to pass faster. The DE does not plug the filter, it just makes a filter cake. The filter cake does the filtering. If after you have a filter cake layer formed, you dumped in sap without the DE it will plug quickly, but adding the DE just makes the filter cake thicker with each pour into the cone or flat filter. Give it a try, your filtering will go faster and will give clearer syrup.
OK. I'm willing to give that a try. I'm pretty sure I know where to get some DE. If you are using the DE, do you only use one prefilter? From what you are saying, once you build up the filter cake you do not want to lose it by removing that prefilter; correct?

[Starting Small]

Does anyone draw off syrup from the evaporator, filter it with a cone filter and bottle it all without reheating? Basically doing it all at the same time?
-Dave

[DanE.]

Dave (Starting Small),

this is how I used to do it up til this year. and it worked good. I would draw off right in the cone filters with 5-6 prefilters in a coffee urn. I could get about 1 gallon per pre-filter. once my draw was complete I would set the urn and filters up on the counter and start to bottle right way. I never had problems with cloudiness of sediment.

also once I started to use the cone filter at the beginning of the season, i never touched again until the end when i burned it. meaning once i started pouring syrup through it, I never washed, It stay in the urn until the season was over. Oh, never plug the urn in or you will get niter forming again. I was filtering about 10 gallons this way. This year is a little different. I'm still using the urn and filters but putting everything up in 1 gallon jugs to be reheated and bottled later.

Dane.

[Starting Small]

Dave (Starting Small),

this is how I used to do it up til this year. and it worked good. I would draw off right in the cone filters with 5-6 prefilters in a coffee urn. I could get about 1 gallon per pre-filter. once my draw was complete I would set the urn and filters up on the counter and start to bottle right way. I never had problems with cloudiness of sediment.

also once I started to use the cone filter at the beginning of the season, i never touched again until the end when i burned it. meaning once i started pouring syrup through it, I never washed, It stay in the urn until the season was over. Oh, never plug the urn in or you will get niter forming again. I was filtering about 10 gallons this way. This year is a little different. I'm still using the urn and filters but putting everything up in 1 gallon jugs to be reheated and bottled later.

Dane.

With the prefilters, when one is plugged up, do you just carefully dump whatever isnt moving into the next prefilter without trying to get the gray slime into the next filter? Thanks for the advice, sorry for hijacking the thread!
-Dave

[Chellis Farm Sugaring]

thanks everyone for your help. i think i found my problem, i can with a candy thermometer and it is off quite a bit (just about 50 deg.)so i was canning at 230 deg. added sap brought back to syrup and filtered/repackaged it. no more cloud!!! live and learn. ill check my equipment more often now thanks again Sean

[psparr]

With the prefilters, when one is plugged up, do you just carefully dump whatever isnt moving into the next prefilter without trying to get the gray slime into the next filter? Thanks for the advice, sorry for hijacking the thread!
-Dave

Pretty much. Most will stay in the pre filter. Once you start tilting the filter the syrup will go through the cleaner part of it fairly easily. Leave the pre filter in there for its heat and the little bit of syrup you'll get out of it.