Bottleing help...what am I doing right or wrong?

[Snowmad]

I'm having problems with niter in a glass container. I have a bunch of questions, hopefully you guys can help.
I'm using a turkey fryer this year to finish off the syrup. When I boil water to calibrate my thermometer, I pour some of the water into my jugs to to sanitize them buy sloshing it around. I usually do it twice. Is that good enough? I get the sap within a couple of degrees of syrup on the evaporator then I filter it through 2 prefilters and a then a felt filter. I crank up the heat on the turkey fryer (55,000 BTU) to warm the syrup back up. I'm using a maple thermometer and when it starts to come up in the pot, I cut the heat back. I notice the temp spikes up to nearly syrup but when I cut the heat to a "normal" boil, it drops back down. Anyone else notice this with turkey fryers? I then keep boiling until it slowly gets to syrup. While boiling, I skim the foam off the top. Once it hits syrup, I kill the flame and start bottling, usually between 215 max and 180 min. Is there a problem with filling jugs too hot? I've found that filling them too fast will cause them to foam up. I never use any anti foam stuff. If I did, would that eliminate that foam? When and why should you use the anti foam? When it comes up in the pot I just cut the burner down then and it goes away so maybe I don't need to worry about it. I don't filter the syrup again because I've already run it through 2 pre filters and the felt. Is this going to cause me to have niter problems? I've noticed a glass jar I filled about 3 weeks ago now seems to have a little sludge in the bottom. Should I be filtering it again after it's syrup? Through which filter? I've read you guys talking about being abusive to your felt filter. I turn mine inside out, and use hot water through a sprayer on a hose until it's clean. Is that wrong? If so, how am I supposed to clean it? I'm terrified about having to dump out 20 gallons of syrup and re-heat it and filter it again and re-bottle it but since we want to sell some, I will if I have to. Will people freak out if the bottom tea spoon in their jug is sandy/nitery? I bought the grading kit and have been labeling my jugs. Thank you very much in advance for your thoughts/suggestions/comments!!

[Don m]

I had a similar issue a few years ago with cloudy syrup. An old timer told me once I have filtered the syrup the first time, don't bring the temp up over 200 again unless I filtered it again. What I have done since then is draw the syrup off from my evaporator, pour it through my filters into a modified turkey fryer that I use as a canner, then maintain the temp of the syrup in the "canner" between 190 and 200 and can the syrup. That has seemed the fix the problems I was having with cloudy syrup.

[abbott]

First: Look through old posts. There is a wealth of info there.

Most niter forms when the syrup is thickest... meaning you are probably creating more niter in the turkey fryer than you are on the evaporator. If you like finishing on the turkey fryer, then you should only filter through papers when you take your syrup off the evaporator, then use papers and felt after the syrup is finished. Your filter washing technique is fine. No, most people don't mind if there is some niter in the jug... especially if they know you're a back yard operation and you explain how that calcium in the bottom is actually good for them. Defoamer helps keep the foam down when you are boiling, but I'm not sure it helps much filling jugs. Just fill them slow enough. You can use a drip of vegetable oil for defoamer. I like to preheat 8 oz glass bottle in the oven to make sure they are sterilized, but anything larger should be sterilized by the hot syrup. Swishing water in them risks thinning out the syrup.

[maple flats]

Agreed, filter at 200+ but then bottle between 185-190. Too high of a temp after filtering (or even allowing too much evaporation from the syrup from "steam") will form more sugarsand.
As for rinsing the bottles, make sure you have no water left in the bottle when you put the syrup in. It takes very little to end up with issues caused from density being too light on top of the bottle, most of the few drops will float to the top and give a perfect place for mold or spoilage to happen.

[Sugarmaker]

I think your doing a good job making syrup. As mentioned: filter hot syrup if over 200 F. Bring filtered syrup back to 180 F to can it. Your filter washing is good.
Have fun, don't get terrified!:)
Regards,
Chris

[MidMichMaple]

Seems to me that if you wait to filter until you have syrup, you would solve the niter problem, assuming that you don't reheat it past 190 after filtering. I finish the syrup, filter, then bottle. The syrup cools while I'm filtering it, so then I reheat it to 180 as gently as possible, and keep it under 190. I don't want to see boiling occur anywhere in the pot. I don't do any filtering before the syrup stage. My results have been good, but I'm not an expert either.

[dcast99]

I 2nd the steaming of the filters. I take the filter rack off the draw off pan and place it on top of the finish pan for a couple of minutes. It heats and wets the filters. The syrup goes thru 100% faster than the cone filter I had been using for the last 3 years.