survey: how many of you throw away the ice?

[ScottyWelden]

I have 17 taps, collecting in plastic buckets. Here's my thinking: If the whole bucket is frozen, there's sugar in the ice. If it's 10% ice, then the ice is probably all water. If it's 50% ice, I lean toward keeping the ice, thinking it must has a decent amount of sugar. Thoughts? What do you all do?

[Flat Lander Sugaring]

yep Gods natural RO

[KV Sappers]

yep Gods natural RO
Same here. That much less I have to boil away.

[twitch]

I keep my ice if i feel there is a chance it will thaw before i boil if not it goes but not before making sure there isn't a pocket of sap in the middle of the block that is nice and sweet

[motowbrowne]

If I've got a lot of sap to cook, I toss it. That's if only 10-20% is ice, like you said. If I am low on sap and long on firewood, I keep it. Only get to boil for 2 or 3 weeks/year. Might as well cook everything I can.

[Jonnie Maple]

Not much of a flow the last couple of days. I went through my buckets and strained off the ice which was 50% or more in each. I only ended up with 4-5 gallons of sap but it was 3.5. That bucket had a layer of ice this morning, threw that away also.

[40to1]

I throw away the ice. Like everyone here, I have tested it though by melting the ice and floating the hydrometer. It was all water.
However, if there was a hard freeze and the bucket is all ice I allow the ice to melt a bit. I figure that if the sugar was the last to freeze, it'll be the first to thaw.

[MapleLady]

I toss the ice.

[Run Forest Run!]

If it's slushy or in shards I let it drain in a colander for a few minutes and then chuck the ice. If it's more of a solid block I let it melt down to about 1/2 or 1/3 and then chuck out the rest. Of course I always have my handy refractometer close by to confirm sugar content. I won't burn propane for 1% when, if I'm running low on sap, I can just tap another tree.

[MichtonTree]

We had a hard freeze a few days ago and the buckets were frozen solid...waited for 40 degree day then poured out what melted. Test came in at 5.5%, then tested what was still frozen and that came in at 1.25%.

[sugarmangraham]

I toss the ice from my buckets. If there is ice in my tanks I pump out the sap and try to get as much of it out the top of the tank as I can if it's not to thick. I haven't ever measured the melted ice but my Thursday morning gathering of 45 gallons was at about 4.5% so I think it's worth it. Especially if you're short on time and fuel.

[wnybassman]

There are many times I like the ice in my storage vessels to keep things cooler for an extra day or two if need be.

[BreezyHill]

When I skim ice I set it in a SS milk funnel over a milk bucket. The ice drains the high sugar sap off. I have melted and test the ice and it was only 0.1% on the highest test using this method.

[Wanabe1972]

I remember 30 years ago when i was young my grandfather used to make syrup in a little shack on a block arch and flat plan. When his health started to fail he would travel to Florida for the winter. I would use his old brace and tap ten trees at the house and then collect everyday and put the sap directly into a deep freeze we had in the basement. When he got home toward the end of maple season i would pull the buckets out to thaw and would notice as they thawed the bucket would have a sticky, sweet center that ressembled a slurpy. I wish i new then that this was natures RO and i could have carved the center out of these buckets to save a days boiling.

[Russell Lampron]

I keep the ice and let the RO decide which part to keep and which part to send to the permeate tank.

[Maplesapper]

I believe there was a post last year that explained if ice forms are -9 C or warmer; it contains no sugar.

[Tapped Out]

I throw out the ice, unless forecasting for warmer weather I keep it for cooling purposes.

[Galena]

I keep the ice. IMNSHO Sap is sap is sap, whether it's frozen or that nice clear liquid that we all want to see in our pails, sap sacks etc.

Hey, when I give blood, they don't take only the *best* 2% and dump out the rest. So why should it be any different for trees?

[West Sumner Sugar]

The way this season has started, had we dumped all the ice...we wouldn't even have boiled yet. Pretty bad when barrels of 2.5% freeze almost solid.

[billyinvt]

I've got about 60 gallons of sap in five gallon buckets, buried in snow. Frozen solid. This should keep a while, yes?

[miner1]

I've got about 70 gallons of rock solid ice here that has been frozen for over a week, the weather has been well below normal. I usually get to the buckets before a hard freeze but with storm force winds in the forecast I felt it would be better to leave the sap in buckets to freeze and hold my buckets in place. I plan on keeping it in the barrels and dumping fresh sap on it. We should have a good run here this week. I'll let you know how things boil out. Never had this issue before, with the weather being so cold for so long after a run. I'm assuming the frozen sap will be of decent quality.

[Waynehere]

I have found that in the middle of that frozen bucket is still a liquid center, full of sugar. I use to bust the ice up in a larger container and get the liquid out. Then dump the ice. Saves a lot of time and wood....:D

[Kilroy]

I needed the ice - warm weather.

[bcarpenter]

I never toss the ice, call me crazy just don't want to risk losing any sap...

[JoeJ]

Just to satisfy my curiosity today, I took ice off from one of my sap tanks and melted it. Sap hydrometer read 1.4%. Heck, 10 days ago, I was boiling 1.1%sap.

[Big_Eddy]

There is science behind this question.

The attached chart shows the various states for a water sucralose solution. The vertical axis is temperature, and the horizontal axis is concentration of sugar. The 3 sections of interest are the light blue, the purple, and the dark blue sections.

Purple is sap. The red upper line is the boiling temperature of sap as the concentration increases. You can see where the boiling temperature at 67 % sugar (Brix) is 105c.

The dark blue section of the chart indicates a super-saturated solution where crystals will form. Normal density syrup (orange line) will not form crystals at room temperature, but as the density increases, the likelihood of crystals forming increases quickly. All the maple sugar products (butter, candy, taffy) are possible because of the crystalline phase. The differences between the sugar products are dependent on the concentration of sugars (soft ball, hard ball, etc), the temperature when the crystals form (cooled or not cooled) and how much the crystals are disturbed during formation (stirred). Taffy is poured hot onto snow, quickly forming large crystals. Butter is formed by cooling fully without disturbing, then stirring hard so only very small crystals form.

The light blue section and the area below it represents ice forming in buckets.
Between 0 and -9.5C, the water part of the sucrolose solution will freeze, leaving the sugars in solution. Below -9C, the sugar solution will freeze completely. As that lump of frozen sap thaws, the more concentrated portions will thaw first, with the last portions to thaw being purely ice.

My rules for collecting ice are as follows.

If the bucket is solid - leave the ice in the bucket, or add it to the tank to keep stored sap cold.
If the bucket is less than 1/3 frozen, keep the liquid and discard the ice.
If there is just a skim of ice on the pail, or there is the remainder of an earlier block floating in the sap, discard.


And - if I have a tank which froze and it is now thawing out, drain the concentrated sap off the bottom until there is "shell ice" left, after which time the remaining ice can be discarded.

[Galena]

I've got about 60 gallons of sap in five gallon buckets, buried in snow. Frozen solid. This should keep a while, yes?

About a week if it's fresh and liquid, but much more than that and I'd be checking very carefully for off-scents and off-flavours. If it's cloudy and./or smelly, chuck it!! However as you say it's frozen solid, it should hypothetically stay good til it thaws.

[Ausable]

Big Eddy explained it very well. When I batch boiled - I would use the ice along with the liquid sap in all my boils. Now I use it to keep my sap cold and very seldom use it in syrup making. I pump the sap from my collection barrel to my storage barrels, pump from my storage barrels to my feed tank and gravity flow from my feed tank to my small continuous flow evaporator. So - The ice is more a nuisance - other than keeping sap cold.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

If you have a reverse osmosis you boil it all.

[Geroldn]

I only have 1 -275g cage for collection and to feed the evaporator. Yesterday I tested 4.5% out of the tank and 2% out of the sap line, so freezing out the water clearly is happening. That 30g block of ice probably doesn't have much sugar, but I can't get it out of the 6" hatch at the top :lol:. So the ice will be used for the next best thing, to keep the sap cold and it will be boiled along with everything else.

[Woody_Woodruff]

I throw it out, but let it drip a bit back into the barrel. By the way, I cut the top off my crate tank and cover with plywood. You can not properly clean one through that hole. (Per my friend Gary at Sugar Bush Supply.)

[Helicopter Seeds]

130521305313054
Thanks Big Eddy for the science chart.
The freezing point has to do with the normality of the solution. We all see salt melts the ice on roads, and recall making ice cream using rock salt and ice, to lower the freeze/ melt point below that of the ice cream solution, which also won't freeze at 0 C. The chart shows this, the more concentrated sap, the lower it freezes. Problem I think people may be assuming is by looking at the percentage of ice. If you drop to a temperature for the sap to freeze, it still takes time to complete that. Similarly, once frozen, it takes time to thaw. Plus new sap dripping in. Empty the buckets into a barrel and I have a layer of slush and chunks. The last boil day was warm, near 50. I skimmed the last bits of ice with a strainer, let it drip, and boiled it down. I boiled some strained ice last weekend separately, got syrup, actually lighter in color than the rest I have.

[scottdevine]

i posted this earlier in a different thread, but i just completed my 55 gallon storage tank (i need another one)...anyway, i just skimmed a 5 gallon bucket of ice out of it, and tested on a refractometer before tossing it. It came in at 1.4-1.8 brix...i'm boiling all my ice this season.