End of Season Sweet

[michttm]

I have a question regarding the last sweet in the evaporator. I have 16 inch flues which hold a lot of sweet after the last boil. My guess is at about 10%, I would have somewhere between 7 and ten gallons of finished product just waiting for disposal. I was thinking of draining the flue pan, cutting off the flow from flue to finish pans, and then filling the flue pan with permeate (also the supply tank to the evaporator). Then I would fill the finish pan to about four inches or so from the drained sweet. Fire her up and watch the temp/level of the finish pan. When ready, drain the syrup off until the level goes down to about an inch or the temp goes up. Then I would add more sweet to about 4 inches of so and repeat the process. I feel the permeate in the flue pan would do a real good job of cleaning the thing out while I was recovering the last of my syrup. Probably will be a little dark, you think? But, that’s OK. Anyone else do this differently, or just figure it isn’t worth the time?

Porcupine Patch Woods
About 800 lined taps
Deer Run 250 RO
Sunrise 2X6 Force evaporator

[Aa2tn]

A little off the topic, but how do you like that sunrise rig with the 16" flues? I just sent in my order for a 2x6 JDL extreme. Looking forward to the upgrade over the 2x4. ......Jim.

[DrTimPerkins]

We put the sweet in our finishing pan and boil to correct density.

[michttm]

Jim....We have the JDL extreme and this was our first season with it. We really like it, especially my wife. She operates it more than I do, and thinks it is great. The OSD pan maintains the temp extremely well. Quite a difference from the rail position of our previous evaporator, which finished syrup in the middle and made the temp jump during the draw. We are getting about 60 gallons off per hour, which I feel is very good for a 2X6. IMHO I think you make an excellent choice in both quality and performance.....Terry

[Aa2tn]

Terry thanks for the great report you are the second syrup maker to give me a report like that! I can't wait for next year already. I am with Dr. Tim, we put our sweet in with the syrup pan, then bring it inside to finish to the proper density.........JIM.

[MunsterMapler]

That sounds similar to what I did at the end of my season. I have a hybrid pan so I don't have a valve between the flue section part and flat pan part but I bought a food grade silicone rubber stopper to plug the hole between sections. Heres my my process. I drained the whole panof sweet out into prefilters then cleaned the pan. Then I put the silicone stopper to plug between the flue section and flat pan section. Then added water to the flue section part and about 2 inches of the filtered sweet to the flat pan part. Lit a fire and and kept an eye on both sections sonthet didn't get too low. My flat pan part is 2 sections so I ran it like a continuous flow untill I didn't have any more sweet. Once it got close to syrup I just kept checking with the hydrometer and stopped adding wood and let it cool. Worked out really well. I figured I saved a bunch of time compared to the turkey fryer. Took me about 2 hours to finish off the 12 gallons of sweet into about 3-4 gallons of finished syrup

[maple flats]

michttm, I used to do it that way, this year I drained both pans and pumped it to my 2x6 propane finisher. I still have some boiling to finish it, today I only got it to 214.2 I'll finish it tomorrow. So far I like the finisher method better, only because I can spend some time doing other chores easier since I don't need to keep as close an eye on the pan. I used to check every fueling which was every 8 minutes, now I check every 15.
Without a finisher I'd still be using the method you're using.

[Russell Lampron]

I put my sweet from the flue pan in my propane finisher and bring it to near density and then drain the front pan into the finisher and bring it all to syrup. I've tried chasing the sweet with water and filling the flue pan with water and pouring the sweet into the front pan and find it is a waste of wood and time.

[Tater]

Anyone ever put a lid on the flue pan when finishing like this? It seems that might keep most of the water/steam in the flue pan.

[abbott]

First off, I get my flue pan as low as possible on my last boil. Hopefully slightly lower than the flues once its done steaming. Then I drain the flue pan and run water in that. But rather than flooding the syrup pans, I set it up so I can trickle the sweet into them while I boil. Works for me to put my spare 12x20 canner above the flue pan and run a short tube into the float box. Meanwhile the rest of the sweet is in buckets, which I warm up by setting them in the flue pan. Takes a couple hours. Then whats left in the front pans I finish in the canner or in pots on the kitchen stove.


Anyone ever put a lid on the flue pan when finishing like this? It seems that might keep most of the water/steam in the flue pan.

But I can't see how this would reduce wood use. So unless you have a limited amount of water, not sure it will help. And it could get dangerous with the steam buildup shooting out through whatever hole it can find.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I run flue pan down to 1/4" and drain it after it cools and fill up with few inches of water and start boiling again and add to syrup pan a little at a time. Takes little more work this way but in long run it is much quicker than dumping the entire contents of the flue pan in the syrup pan and batch boiling it down. Makes better quality syrup doing this and once it gets going, I keep a constant draw off coming off the syrup pan.

[Bucket Head]

For the last two years at the end of the last boil we have switched to running permeate in. We do it for a couple of hours and then shut down. We do it this way because we would have too much sweet to try and boil down in our small finisher. This way we only use the finisher for whats left in the front pan, after the water has pushed most of the sweet out of the flue pan. The other benefit is it helps a little bit with the flue pan cleanup.