New evaporator

[The dairy farmer]

Just got my new half pint evaporator, any tips on useing it and things to avoid ?

[bowhunter]

I just started with a new half pint last year so I'll tell you what little I know.
1. Make sure you put fire brick in it.
2. Make sure it's level.
3. Once you get it put together with the pan off, look down at the grate from the front. You'll notice a 2 inch or so gap between the grate and the door. Lay some pieces of 1/2 fire brick in there to force all the air up through the grate. This will improve the evaporation rate quite a bit.
4. Make sure your wood is as dry as possible and split wrist size or smaller. This makes a big difference.
5. Stack the wood in the arch alternating to keep good air flow around each piece. This also keeps the boil rate up.
6. It's pretty difficult to make finished syrup on the 1/2 pint, but there are people on this forum who do it. I boiled about 90% of the water off on the evaporator and finished in the kitchen. I made really good syrup, but it took several steps.
7. I had a syrup hydrometer and it made a lot of difference when I was finishing the syrup off. I found a lot of variation in the temperature of the boiling syrup.
8. You don't have to empty the pan every day when you finish boiling. Just leave the partially finished sap in the pan. If you want to restart with a gradient pull off a couple gallons when you finish and put that back in the last compartment when you start up the next time. The idea is that as the sap flows through the channels you develop a gradient that goes from 2% sugar to 66% sugar at the draw off.
9. It will take a day or more of boiling to generate any finished syrup.
10. Filtering is a real pain. Sometimes it filters pretty easy and other times it doesn't. I was never able to really determine why.
11. Have fun.. it's definitely easier to make good tasting syrup than you might think.