Dirty, Dirty, syrup.

[Pete S]

So this was our second boil of the season. We filter when we gather with cloth, and I have a water filter on my tank line to the batch pan evaporator.

As we boiled yesterday we did skim some dirty scum off, but not excessive. Then after about 10 hours, there was NO FOAM, and the boiling liquid was just like black coffee. Stopped at 15 hours.

We use 3 orlon filters within a wool cone. My wife mans the filters on my homemade filter stand. We knew it was going to be bad but we plugged all three and the wool filter with the BLACKEST, finest, silty mud God has created.

What? Why?

Just curious as we put the syrup into a stainless milk can and can't really tell if our primitive filtering did the job. We'll can it in a week'er do.

Thanks!

[maplerookie]

So this was our second boil of the season. We filter when we gather with cloth, and I have a water filter on my tank line to the batch pan evaporator.

As we boiled yesterday we did skim some dirty scum off, but not excessive. Then after about 10 hours, there was NO FOAM, and the boiling liquid was just like black coffee. Stopped at 15 hours.

We use 3 orlon filters within a wool cone. My wife mans the filters on my homemade filter stand. We knew it was going to be bad but we plugged all three and the wool filter with the BLACKEST, finest, silty mud God has created.

What? Why?

Just curious as we put the syrup into a stainless milk can and can't really tell if our primitive filtering did the job. We'll can it in a week'er do.

Thanks! I am not real experienced at this but sounds like a lot of smoke and soot around the pans as you boiled. The smoke has a lot of particulate matter that seems to like to settle in on top of the boiling sap.. if you have a stack at the rear of your arch try to get it up a little higher if you don't have one. consider one for next year. You had a long boil. perhaps a smaller pan for the almost syrup with more draw offs during your long boil and then finish it all together. If you are all inside the shack and have a good draft on your stack flue...then I don't know. well good luck with your next boil .How does it taste? burnt?

[happy thoughts]

Sounds like burnt niter to me. Fifteen hours of batch boiling can do that. How burnt did your pan sides get? It's possible that helped darken your syrup a lot. Add end of season sap and or/old sap that's been stored too long, both of which tend to make darker syrup. Also what kinds of trees are you tapping? In my experience with reds and sugars, niter from reds tends to be dark brown and that from sugars much lighter.

Filtering sap does nothing to remove niter. It just removes debris that may have gotten into your collection containers.

But that said, how does the syrup taste? That's really all that matters. Dark syrup with deep maple flavor is what a lot of people prefer. Hopefully you're one of them :)

[happy thoughts]

@ maplerookie- good point about the smoke and ash.

[Pete S]

We boil inside my shack and have the pan bottom exposed to the fire and gasketed. Absolutely NO SMOKE! (not even a wif)

Syrup flavor is WONDERFUL! A bit more robust than the first boil, although darker which for us is typical.

As for the length of boil, we do this length purty regular.

What is funny is that the foam disappeared,.....completely after about 10 hours.

Should we consider making shorter runs on boils, and then dump together and finish?

We are able to finish in the 2 x 3 pan. It's tricky but works.

BTW we do have sediment issues after canning. "Gin Clear" in the stainless double boiler,......can it, and then SH*T sediment!

Thanks for the responses.

[smokeyamber]

Sounds like you are making some nice slow cooked syrup... it will have a great taste. On you last comment about sediment, if you finish and then bottle you will get some niter settling out. If you finish and then strain, or just let cool and then only reheat to around 190 before bottling you will not generate any more niter. Niter comes when you bring the syrup up to a boil. I fought this myself for a few year til someone here clued me in.

[Pibster]

This year I decided to use a prefilter when drawing near syrup off the evaporator. The hot syrup flowed thru the filter fairly quickly but left a pile of dark gunk (nitre) behind. After that I boil the near syrup on my gas burner until it gets to the right density. I found that this made my final filtering into my coffee urn much faster with very little crap in the prefilters.

[happy thoughts]

This year I decided to use a prefilter when drawing near syrup off the evaporator. The hot syrup flowed thru the filter fairly quickly but left a pile of dark gunk (nitre) behind. After that I boil the near syrup on my gas burner until it gets to the right density. I found that this made my final filtering into my coffee urn much faster with very little crap in the prefilters.

This is actually a good practice from what I've read since the source stated that most niter is formed between 55-60 brix. At that density the hot near syrup filters easily and most of the gunk gets removed before final finishing.

This is basically the same thing I do but instead of filtering, allowing near syrup to settle out. Then I finish it and let it settle out some more before final bottling. I've been able to get clear syrup I'm pretty happy about with no filtering. It's not perfect. I still get a few traces of sand "dust" on the bottom of my sealed jars on long standing but it's good enough for home use.

[MarkNB]

This year I decided to use a prefilter when drawing near syrup off the evaporator. The hot syrup flowed thru the filter fairly quickly but left a pile of dark gunk (nitre) behind. After that I boil the near syrup on my gas burner until it gets to the right density. I found that this made my final filtering into my coffee urn much faster with very little crap in the prefilters.

Pibster, was there a lot of liquid that wouldn't go through the filter along with the 'dark gunk'? I did the same thing the first boil this year, I ran the near syrup through my orlon and wool filters, then finished on the stove. There was about 1/3gallon liquid left in the filter that didn't want to go through, should have I just been a little more patient and wait for it to drip through?

What I ended up doing is after all of the 'quick' near syrup had gone through, I drew all of the nice clear stuff off, and the stuff that wouldn't go through I then squeezed through the filter into another container. This last liquid also seems quite a bit denser than the nice clear stuff, and I didn't boil it down any further. Makes for some really inky murky syrup, that actually tastes pretty good. However, next boil if I get more gunk, I plan on just letting nature and gravity do the filtering, hot syrup is hard on your hands....

[scott135]

I have had 4 weekend boils this year. First 3 I got about 2 gallons of light syrup. Last one got 2 gallons of dark more flavorful syrup from 70 gallons of sap. I have been boiling on a home built oil tank arch slowly boiling until it is all in the pans and up to 217-218 degrees, then filter with an old prefilter, had quite a bit of dark gunk and squeezed the remains through the filter, finish boil on gas stove, filter with a new prefiliter and wool, again a lot of gunk but the final product was dark and fairly clear.

It is all about filtering.

I end up at about 221 degrees before it reaches Brix 59 hot.

[asknupp]

I have been doing the same as pibster. Works well. I let the Orlon drip over night and any leftover syrup in filter goes back into the evap for next boil.

[Errin OH]

I do not know your setup up but here is a few things I observed when batch boiling over a open pit.

Burnt sides - Just like burning in a pan when the sap is over cooked, the sides tend to burn at the boil line. Difference is where a burnt pan is just burnt, the small amout burnt on the sides can and does get wash/cleaned off to some extent and ends up in the syrup and adds up over the entire boil.

Scum - The scum only seemed to form as the sap boils down. Once we got to the point we were close to syrup we didn't need to skim any more.

Filtering - A batch system where the pan is emptied everytime dumps all the sand and other crap in the filter. We had to limit our batches to 45 gallons or so of sap at a time. Any more and we could not get it filtered.

I had actually ordered extra filters expecting simular filtering problems on the new arch pan given we were planning on boiling hundreds of gallons at a time drawing off as we went. It turned out we only needed a single paper filter at draw off followed by 1 paper and the wool into bulk storage. BIG difference. When drawing off you do not empty all the contents but draw off and continue on with much of the sand still in the pan. The paper filter used at draw off was clean between draws. The bulk filter was only cleaned when we shut down for the night.

15 hours is a long time for a batch. Of course if using a small 2 gallon pot or 20 gallon pot as I did makes a difference. In our setup (20g SS pot over open pit) we could boil about 10 gallon an hour as long as we kept it full. Once we stopped adding sap the rate came way down as we lost surface area (sides of the pot). Pretty amazing how a 50 gallon barrel of sap turns into 1.5" of syrup in the bottom of a pot. I am just guessing but I bet you ran through a lot of sap in that batch.

[Pibster]

Pibster, was there a lot of liquid that wouldn't go through the filter along with the 'dark gunk'? I did the same thing the first boil this year, I ran the near syrup through my orlon and wool filters, then finished on the stove. There was about 1/3gallon liquid left in the filter that didn't want to go through, should have I just been a little more patient and wait for it to drip through?
My Orlon filter will plug sometime near the end. I usually soak the filter in some raw sap to get some of the sugar out and then dump the sap into my float box. Then the filter goes to the kitchen sink for a good cleaning with hot water.

[Pkalmykow]

Interesting, my first boil ended up fairly dark. I boiled about 120 gallons of sap, took off one batch fairly clear medium. Boiled down the rest into murky amber. I use a 5 gallon filter can with orlon filter and paper pre-filter.

Usually we have no problem with producing a nice, clear syrup, but the first batch ended up with burnt syrup on the bottom of the syrup pan, and assume the murk and darker grade came from the burnt stuff when I finished the second batch

To try to clean up the murk, I dumped the opaque amber into a 18"x18" propane finishing pan and took it up to 190F, and refiltered. No luck, guess the nitre is smaller than the orlon pores. Tastes great, mind you, with our french toast this morning. Other than letting the particles settle, is there any other filter medium that will take it out?

Paul

[RollinsOrchards]

Pkalmykow,

I had a similar experience and finally found a small hole in one of my Orlon filters. Hard to see with the naked eye, but I put a steady water flow from a hose against every square inch of the filter and found a spot where the water gushed out much faster.