Divided tray

[Eds Constructors]

New to the hobbie(3rd year)and forum and been seeing a lot about divided/fluted pans. I was wondering what benefit it would be to put dividers in a flat pan? Fluted / dropped I can see the obvious (more surface area) However I am not seeing the divider thing? I have a 35 gal drum with a 16x28x8 stainless and boiled down appr.15 gal and seemed to take waaaaaay to long to boil. It is my first year with new drum setup, so there is still a small learning curve on how to get the best boil. Any help GREATLY APPRECIATED, I certainly don't want to miss out on this year's sweet stuff!

2-1/2 acre virgin sugarbush
Lots of Sugar and Reds
5 LARGE roadside

2014 - 1 tap
1/2 quart
HOOKED!

2015 - 7 taps
50-55 gal sap
5 quarts (1- grade a light, 4 dark amber)
Turkey fryer

2016 -10 taps currently, more if I can get the boil quicker
120 gal. storage
1 quart, 1 pint early , light and sweet, hoping for 3- 4 gal
God given 2 legs for collecting
Might figure out something for snowmobile if I get enough time

8x14, three walled, log sugar shack

[Clinkis]

The purpose of the divides is so that raw sap can be added at one point and syrup drawn off at the other. The first divider has an opening at one end and the next divider has an opening at the other thus you create a path where the sap flows through the pan. At the opposite end of the path from where the raw sap is added the temperature is monitored and when it reaches the appropriate point (usually 219'F) a valve is opened and syrup is drawn off until temperature drops. The process just keeps going on and is called continuous flow. The dividers, unfortunately will not create a faster boil though.

[Big_Eddy]

Ed
As Clinkis states - the dividers will not increase the rate of evaporation.
What the dividers do is allow you to change from a batch boiling process to a continuous flow process.

Batch boiling, you add and add sap until eventually the entire pan is (almost)syrup, then take off the whole batch and start again. For your pan - that would be more than 40 gallons of sap in a batch.

Continuous flow, you only add sap at one end of the pan, as as the water evaporates and is replenished with more sap, eventually the concentration at the other end of the pan approaches syrup. This "gradient" allows you to take off syrup at one end of the evaporator while adding fresh sap at the other end. It takes a lot of sap (>100 gallons) to get the pans sweetened, but once the pans are sweetened you can then boil however much sap you have available each day. The pans are left sweetened between boils.

The batch process is well suited to the weekend boiler who collects sap all week, then boils for 8-36 hrs over the weekend. For larger operations boiling each day's sap as it is collected, the flow process allows for short or long boils as appropriate.

The picture below shows the gradient in my small evaporator. Raw sap entering at the lower right, flowing across the back pans, then more and more concentrated syrup in the front pan to the outlet.

Oh yeah - welcome to the neighbourhood!

[Eds Constructors]

Thanks to the both of you, it looks a little complicated at this time, I'll have to stick to the flat pan for now. My guess is that one of you could tell me apr.what my boil rate per hour should be, 16x28x8? Ive not been doing this long enough to get all the little tricks of the trade and can't seem to get more than 25-30 gals boiled out in less than 10 -12 hours. I had to give away sap last year! Thankfully I knew someone else who made syrup (friend of a friend) and gave it to them. They were nice enough to give back some sweet stuff. It was interesting to note the difference in taste from how two individuals boil out the same sap( me on propane turkey fryer and him on potbelly Stovetop) maybe length of time boiling and or density made his darker, lenghth of time before boiling time? Either way, any advice on quicker boils besides bigger pan? I need any and all the info I can get. Lol
Thanks in advance
Thank you for the welcome as well

[Mini_Maple_Men]

Is your fire up on a grate under your pans or at the bottom of your barrel? If at the bottom, consider adding a grate to get your fire closer to the pans and an ash door at the bottom, then you can open the ash door to get more air into your fire for more heat on your pans. I also redneck renovated my wife's window fan to blow air into the ash door on my arch which boosted my evaporation rate up an additional 5 gallons an hour. Plus you will see on here the concensis is wood has to be dry and no bigger around than your wrist. Hope this helps. Lee

[Eds Constructors]

No it isn't, I did raise it a little but a sufficient amount of air under the logs wasn't there, that's first on the list. Secondly the little fan in front of the ash door sounds good as well. The wood not being as big will probably help me out too. Hoping this works better because my boil rate is waaaay down from what it appears you might have with similar set up. After measuring the amount of fluid my pan holds (10 gal) it took 5-1/2-6 hours to boil that down to where I could bring it inside to finish. 1-1/2 hours later I got 1 quart and 2 pints from 10 gal of sap? As I've heard the "nature's RO" got to my sap went I went to boil it.
MY ROOKIE MISTAKE# 1
DON'T START FIRE BEFORE CHECKING SAP
Thanks, I need all the help I can get! lol

[Mini_Maple_Men]

A half gallon of syrup from 10 gallons is silly high sugar content! 2gph evap rate should get to around 8ish if you raise the grates and get the air flowing

[Clinkis]

If I understand you correctly your are filling your pan and then boiling it down? If so, one way you can drastically increase your evaporation rate is to run about an 1 to 1&1/2" in your pan and slowly keep adding sap to it in one corner to maintain that level. Easy way is to take a plastic bucket and attach a tap to it and just open it a crack and allow a slow trickle in.

[Eds Constructors]

Mini maple, 1 quart mason jar and 2 little mason jars (1/2 pints) so in total 1 quart, 1 pint, sorry for mistake ,I thought the little jars were 1 pint. I threw away a lot of ice in my 5gal. buckets so I would assume that the sugar content was higher to begin with (22 gal. of sap down to about 9-10 gal) of unfrozen sap.
Clinkis, I did pour all of the sap in at once right from the frozen buckets( popped a couple holes in top with axe) so it was quite cold! As I pointed out in my "rookie mistake" I now know not only to check to see if it's frozen, but to also at least try to get it to room temp the night before (if possible).
Thank you both

[Mini_Maple_Men]

Makes way more sense at 20+ gallons of sap and a freezer Sugar seperator! Good luck this year!