maintaining sap level in pan at draw off?????

[Rock Bottom Maple]

Hope this comes out right. So, you are boiling away. Adding preheated sap. At the same rate it is boiling off. So level in pan
is constant (roughly). Now comes time to draw off syrup.

My question/confusion. Say I draw off a gallon. How do you bring pan level back up. With out losing your boil?
Do you just run preheat a little more open for a bit. Does concentrated sap get a bit deeper in that corner of pan. Maybe I think to much. :O)

home made barrel evaporator last season. Hoping for a real evaporator in 2015.

[Dennis H.]

With an evap that has float boxes that regulate raw sap entering the flue pan you should not have any issues to worry about.
As long as you are not drawing off syrup with the valve wide open. You want to find that sweet spot with your evap so that when it is time to drawoff syrup you are taking syrup out of your syrup pan nice and slow and steady. This will help to keep the gradient in your syrup pan, which will also help to prevent a mass of cold raw sap entering your flue pan.
By doing slow and steady draw off's you will be more frequent but smaller drawoff's. which in the end will keep the pans boiling at their best.

[Rock Bottom Maple]

Thanks for the reply. Still learning. Thanks again.

[Big_Eddy]

Even with your barrel evaporator, a gallon is not much in proportion to the total amount of liquid in the pans. It amounts to ~ 1/4" in a 2'x3' pan. Open the valve, draw off your syrup until the temperature drops, then crack open your fill valve a bit more until the level gets back to where you were.