Finishing off

[Graham Agri Enterprises]

I would like to finish off the sweet that is in my evaporator. If I use water in the supply tank will it push the sweet ahead out of the flue pan to finish? Even an extra gallon would help in a short year! Any help is welcome

Thanks

[Michael Greer]

The other way to do it is to drain the back pan off into buckets and re-fill it with lots of water...fill it right up. build a fire and feed the front pan by hand...a quart or so at a time to maintain the proper level, and draw off in the usual manner. It takes an extra pair of hands to do it this way, but it gets ALL of the sugar out of the flue pan. When you finally run out, kill the fire and drain the last few gallons into a big pot and cook it on the stove.

[PerryW]

another thing you can do is carefully evaporate the level in your back pan using a small fire until the flues are barely covered. Have some water handy in case you go too low. Then let everything cool down and use the method described by Micheal Greer.

[DrTimPerkins]

I would like to finish off the sweet that is in my evaporator. If I use water in the supply tank will it push the sweet ahead out of the flue pan to finish? Even an extra gallon would help in a short year! Any help is welcome.

The water doesn't actually "push" the sweet through. What it does however is "steepen" the gradient between the sap inlet and outlet, which can result in more syrup being drawn off. This is a temporary fix though, and eventually it'll stop.

If you want to preserve as much syrup as possible, the better way would be either use a finishing rig if you have one, or plug the connection between the front and backpans, then drain the sweet that is in the backpan into buckets and then flood the backpan with water, and pour all the sweet into the front pan. Just make sure to keep adding water to the backpan too so it doesn't run dry, and stop before your frontpan gets too low. What you can't get out of the frontpan in this way you can pour off and boil on the stove.

[Graham Agri Enterprises]

Thanks all . Have used most of the methods described in the past. I was hoping I was missing an easier solution !

[PerryW]

Thanks all . Have used most of the methods described in the past. I was hoping I was missing an easier solution !

Give the sweet to a guy with a smaller evaporator.