Tweegs
03-18-2015, 10:28 AM
Sugar content is on the rise, what came in yesterday was 2.5%.
Ran 235 gallons of sap and drew off 5 gallons of dark.
Something doesn’t seem right.
We were having a lot of trouble with the sap level in the pans the first couple of boils, couldn’t maintain a constant level. Would range from 1.5” down to .5” (I like to run at .75”). We noticed, at times, the flue pan was pulling sap back from the syrup pan (we have a drop flue).
Turns out that the float box was way off level, lower at the float than at the inlet for the flue pan (flue and syrup pans are perfectly level). This, we believe, caused the float to, also at times, rub up against the side of the float box which caused the problem maintaining constant levels.
After leveling the float box, we ran that 235 gallons yesterday without a hitch, constant .75” start to finish. Problem was we had dark syrup. Given that this is the start of the year, sugar content is up, sap is crystal clear, we are processing the sap almost as fast as it is coming in, everything is clean and fresh and GPH on the evap is in the low 40’s, it seems like we should be drawing off in the light to medium range. Instead, we started dark and got darker as the day went on. We began the season with 1.6% sap and drew off on the lighter side of medium.
My thought is that since we were having issues with sap returning from the syrup pan to the flue pan, it’s possible we are/were making syrup in the flue pan.
With the sugar content higher now and the float/depth issue apparently fixed, we thought we’d drain the flue pan and start tomorrows boil with fresh sap there and see what happens to the grade.
Anyone have thoughts they’d like to share?
Ran 235 gallons of sap and drew off 5 gallons of dark.
Something doesn’t seem right.
We were having a lot of trouble with the sap level in the pans the first couple of boils, couldn’t maintain a constant level. Would range from 1.5” down to .5” (I like to run at .75”). We noticed, at times, the flue pan was pulling sap back from the syrup pan (we have a drop flue).
Turns out that the float box was way off level, lower at the float than at the inlet for the flue pan (flue and syrup pans are perfectly level). This, we believe, caused the float to, also at times, rub up against the side of the float box which caused the problem maintaining constant levels.
After leveling the float box, we ran that 235 gallons yesterday without a hitch, constant .75” start to finish. Problem was we had dark syrup. Given that this is the start of the year, sugar content is up, sap is crystal clear, we are processing the sap almost as fast as it is coming in, everything is clean and fresh and GPH on the evap is in the low 40’s, it seems like we should be drawing off in the light to medium range. Instead, we started dark and got darker as the day went on. We began the season with 1.6% sap and drew off on the lighter side of medium.
My thought is that since we were having issues with sap returning from the syrup pan to the flue pan, it’s possible we are/were making syrup in the flue pan.
With the sugar content higher now and the float/depth issue apparently fixed, we thought we’d drain the flue pan and start tomorrows boil with fresh sap there and see what happens to the grade.
Anyone have thoughts they’d like to share?