ice bank tank

[Bentley Wood Maple]

Has anyone tried using a 300 gallon tank of ice/water slush to recirculate sap through a cooling loop to avoid dumping sap this time of year?
Going down to pull plug on my bulk tank dumping 350 gallons of sour sap. Gathering it one drip at a time opening that vave would bring a tear to the eye of a wooden indian...
: (

[mspina14]

That sounds painful!

[mellondome]

It would be easier to connect up a milk tank cooling unit.
The old ice bank units pushed chilled water through the coils.
How are you going to get and maintain 300 gal of ice?

[maple maniac65]

Doesn't chilled or frozen sap still spoil to some degree

[psparr]

Doesn't chilled or frozen sap still spoil to some degree

Yes it does. Albeit slower.

[DaveB]

Has anyone tried using a 300 gallon tank of ice/water slush to recirculate sap through a cooling loop to avoid dumping sap this time of year?
Going down to pull plug on my bulk tank dumping 350 gallons of sour sap. Gathering it one drip at a time opening that vave would bring a tear to the eye of a wooden indian...
: (

I'm considering building an insulated structure around my main tank and using a Cool Bot and an old air conditioner to refrigerate it for much the same reason. There's usually a week or two at the end of the season where I'm getting good sap but it can spoil before I can get to it. Keeping it cool helps, but it can still spoil but it will buy you time.

[BreezyHill]

I have an isulated zero tank and an unisulated tank in the sugar house. I find it is best to bring the sap into the insulated tank and RO to the uninsulated tank and have the sap run across the side wall to cool. When batching. The unisulated tank is in the corner with concrete wall on two sides and outside air is coming in under the door when the base plate is taken out to cool the tank.

Think of your frig. Bread will last longer in there than on the tale but wont last for ever. Same with sap.

Cooling sap in the late season is a chanllenge for us as well. I thought of using a copper heat exchanger with water from the brook in the 3/4 line and the 1" thimble line would have the sap but the brook is around 47 end of season on sunny days so not much help there. Then thought about a buried tank of glycol to circulate but a buddy that does geothermal said that will be around 48-50. So I am back to hooking up the compressor on the bulk tank to chill.

[Austin351]

How about running a cooling can (like some race cars have to cool gas)? The opposite effect of a stack wrapped pre-heating copper coil but still the same concept. Pump sap from storage tank through a coil of tubing (doesn't need to be copper), through an ice filled barrel (in the barrel is where the cooling coil would be) and then back into the storage tank. Don't know if I am explaining this very well but hopefully you get the idea.

[smokeyamber]

How about the old ice house ... i have a pond and thought it would be interesting to harvest some ice and fill something like a root cellar with it, then have the tank sitting on top of it and surrounded by stacked ice... figure it would last a couple of weeks..... I would guess you could also "make" ice in the winter as well and move it into the storage structure. Insulate the structure enough to help as well... I am headed this direction anyway since I use black barrels that just get too warm with any kind of sun...

[lpakiz]

All the Amish around here have an ice house in their yard, made of 4 inch insulated foam panels, then sheeted with OSB, and an insulated shingled (steel) roof. They harvest ice from a pond in the winter and it lasts all summer, until it's cool enough for them to not need ice cooling.

[Bentley Wood Maple]

We have the recipe for ice just need to come up with sawdust insulate it. Had another 75 gallons come in the tank today, still looks clear out of the line until it sets in the tank all day. If could keep it chilled for 36 hrs would try and run it tomorrow. As long as we can get it through the filters have no issue running dark/very dark syrup. Have a lot of requests for it actually