GV2
04-04-2014, 07:38 AM
My nights are not cold enough to partially freeze sap anymore (the poor man’s RO), so I borrowed this idea from information about ice cream making. Note that the reason why this works is because salted ice water is colder than plain ice water.
In the evening I placed 3 aluminum collection buckets in a 20 gallon cooler. I then created a saltwater ice bath around the buckets with 3 16lb bags of ice, 2 pitchers of rock salt, and a few pitchers of cold water. About a 1/3 of the sap was frozen the next morning and the sugar content of the sap was doubled. I can run about 15 gallons through this system in 2 bathes in about 24 hours. I am collecting about that much sap and boiling about every 3 days at a rate of 4+ gallons per hour. So this is a worth it for me, but may not be for other backyard operations that cherish every sugar molecule. (The residual ice will have some low sugar content.)
In the evening I placed 3 aluminum collection buckets in a 20 gallon cooler. I then created a saltwater ice bath around the buckets with 3 16lb bags of ice, 2 pitchers of rock salt, and a few pitchers of cold water. About a 1/3 of the sap was frozen the next morning and the sugar content of the sap was doubled. I can run about 15 gallons through this system in 2 bathes in about 24 hours. I am collecting about that much sap and boiling about every 3 days at a rate of 4+ gallons per hour. So this is a worth it for me, but may not be for other backyard operations that cherish every sugar molecule. (The residual ice will have some low sugar content.)