Vinegar Cleaning

[OCHTO]

I put 6 gal. of straight vinegar in my 2 X 4 flat pan and let it soak for a week then scrubbed with a plastic scouring pad. Worked great! I should have bought 5 more gallons though as it didn't cover all the burnt on sap on the side of the fire box end. Does anyone dilute the vinegar? For the price and ease of use it is perfect for me. I don't have running water for rinsing. Could I save the used vinegar in a 5 gal jug in the basement and Use it again next year adding 5 gallons more fresh vinegar? It's not that it costs much It just gives me satisfaction to do things as cheap as possible. Thanks! I used rhubarb leaves one year and that worked great but it was too hard to clean up. Now that's cheap!

[n8hutch]

I cut my vinegar about 5 to 1 with water, still works great. Maybe not as fast as straight vinegar

[maple flats]

I just drain the pan with pushing most but not all the last of the near syrup thru, then I add a gal of white vinegar, that way I likely have almost half vinegar. I never tried cutting it more. When I need a better cleaning job, I swap pans and put the dirty one out on a shelf under my head tank. I then have a pan washer made that uses permeate water. I just run a SS sump pump and the pan drains back into a half barrel to be pumped again. After about an hour running, I drain that water, add fresh permeate and run the pan washer again. That final wash usually runs about 45-60 min. and then I shut it off. The pan is ready to use unless I had some burnt in the pan. In that case it takes 3-4 hrs with a little elbow grease in between hourly sessions of running the pump on fresh perm.

[MISugarDaddy]

We use a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water to clean our pans to like new condition. We heat it up enough so it is steaming, then cover the pan until the next day and the pan will shine when you rinse it out. We have never tried to save the mixture because it is rather cloudy when we are finished and we don't need more stuff sitting around to deal with throughout the rest of the year.
Gary