general RO question

[11-Nick]

You have to be careful how long you store "normal" sap, and under what temperatures. Once it is run through an RO, how much wiggle room do you have on storage times/temps?
How much boil time does it save you with the simple homemade systems people are making (approximately)?

Sorry if these are basic questions. Just thinking ahead to next year.

[MISugarDaddy]

You should not plan to store concentrated sap out of an RO, but rather boil it ASAP, due to its concentrated sugar level that attracts bacteria. Depending on the RO and the number of times you process it through the unit, it will cut your boil time and your wood consumption considerably. For example, if you concentrate 2% sap to 8%, you have removed 75% of the water, so if you had 200 gallons of 2% sap before processing it through your RO, now you have only 50 to boil. We hesitated getting an RO, now we wish we had done it years ago.
Gary

[Clinkis]

I found when using the smaller residential component RO's you usually can get away with storing concentrate for a little while if it's kept good and cold. I would run mine overnight and then boil the next evening. Towards the end of the season this becomes tougher when temps rise. With the larger commercial component units you should be boiling your concentrate within a few hours as these units usually concentrate to higher sugar levels and heat up the sap. This is an ideal recipe for bacteria.

[bowhunter]

I have a home made RO and I reduce my boiling time and wood consumption by 2/3's. Most people get 50-70% reduction with the home made RO's. I don't have any experience storing concentrate since I feed directly into the evaporator as it's produced. I do this to avoid storing it and having potential problems.

[Russell Lampron]

I concentrate into the 12% to 14% range and now and make 100 gallons of syrup per cord of wood. When I boiled raw sap I was only making 10 gallons of syrup per cord of wood as an example of the savings. This is my 11th season with my RO and it is the best thing that I have purchased other than my evaporator. I don't know how much you can concentrate to with a homemade RO but any water removed is a savings.

As far as concentrate shelf life is concerned you should plan on boiling it as soon as it is at the concentrate level that you want. You not only concentrate the sugars when remove the water you also concentrate the bacteria. The concentrate gets warmed up some as part of the process too which promotes bacteria growth.

I was the second guy in my town which has the most maple producers in the state to get an RO and also the smallest at the time. There were a lot of myths concerning syrup grade and flavor floating around about at the time, mostly negative. Those have been proven false and it seems that everyone is jumping onto the RO band wagon now, even the little guys. If you do build one you will be happy that you did. My only regrets are that I should have bought mine sooner and that I should have bought a bigger one.

[11-Nick]

I wasn't thinking about the bacteria component. I made the assumption that since almost-syrup was reduced sap and could be held longer than plain sap, then so could sap that was reduced by going through the RO.
My mistake.
RO's are getting to where you can build a homemade model cheaper than you can build an evaporator (unless it's build from free materials). It is hard not to consider one.

[Russell Lampron]

The bacteria in the almost syrup is killed in the boiling process. That is also why we reheat syrup to 190* when canning. It gets the syrup hot enough to kill any bacteria that may be in the jug before you fill it.