How does a stem away work?

[John Wiesner's Legacy]

Trying to decide if I should buy one. Any input?

[Sugarmaker]

They work similar to a double boiler. Steam from your existing rear pan provides the heat for raising the sap temp in the steam away. Then air under pressure creates bubbles in that heated sap to allow some water to be removed from the sap. We boil raw sap (no RO) so 2% sap going in comes out at 3% sap going into the rear flue pan. Folks with RO's see similar increases in numbers like in the Leader catalog. 8% sap in with 12% coming out. like 1.5 increase.
We built our steam away (post on here about WRU, Water Reduction Unit). It works well never, says a word and improves the efficiency of the old King. Lots of folks are getting a RO instead of a steam away for similar monies and get much higher sugar sap to the arch. Or if they have the steam away already then they run it along with the RO.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Chris