Mid-season syrup pan cleaning

[DocsMapleSyrup]

So I have a dumb question. When do you know that you need to clean your syrup pan? How do you know that there is enough niter (sp) built up and that you should clean the pan. I ask because last year was my first year with a continuous flow setup. The last boil of the year, I reversed the flow. This lifted some niter which was like formica, off the bottom of the pain and I scorched my new same side reverse pan. Obviously, I needed to clean that pan before that happened. What is the process for draining the syrup pan while keeping sap in the flue pan, then cleaning the syrup pan. Some help for the inexperienced sapper please.

[psparr]

Just clean when you feel it needs it. Experience will guide you. You should be able to get "plugs" to put in the outlet of the flue pan, then you can disconnect the sap pan to clean it.

[wiam]

I like valves between my pans. My 2x6 had a plug and it would not seal. When the front pan was empty the flue pan would leak into it. I only used permeate to clean with that set up so nothing bad would leak the other way into the bacome pan. I concentrate to 16-18%. Doing that on a 2x6 I could boil about 3 hours or about 30 gallons of syrup. On that size pan I found reversing to be useless because nitre was all through the pan anyway. Raw sap would probably be different. I cleaned that pan every day. At the end of a boil I would take the whole front pan to syrup before emptying then put 5 gallons of permeate in and let set overnight. Next day would not take much scrubbing. With a bigger pan I do the same except I use a pump to circulate the permeate.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

You can feel it in the pan and it's a judgment call each time. Really can't say a certain amount of gallons to do it. Once it feels gritty across most of the pan we change it out. We clean our pans after every boil and sometimes mid stream if we have to. We changed pans 3 times last year the day we made 180 gallons of syrup. As psparr said, you need to plug it off between the pans.

[Super Sapper]

I scrape along the bottom of the last channel with a scoop or something and you will start to feel some drag when it builds up with niter. I drain my syrup pan into a pail and rinse out what I can with a hose. I then add my pan acid solution (can use milk stone remover, pan acid, vinegar etc. mixed with water) and start a fire to warm the cleaning solution and leave sit overnight. I filter and save my acid solution in a pail to use the next time and just add more acid. Rinse out and some minor scrubbing if needed, add your sweet back and you are ready to go. I need to clean every 300 to 500 gallons of sap.

[PerryFamily]

You'll have to feel it out and make the call. With my old 2x6 I ran 1000 taps and ran 10-12% I did exactly as Wiam did. Clean every boil. I can go a little longer on my 3x8 but still swap pans very frequently

One thing I can tell you is there's a fine line between being easy to clean and pushing it a little to far and having to really scrub

[wiam]

One thing I can tell you is there's a fine line between being easy to clean and pushing it a little to far and having to really scrub

And that line is less than 20 minutes. lol

[madmapler]

I agree with all the posts and do pretty much the same as supersapper except not as often, maybe because I use a bigger pan. The one thing I want to add is if you can reverse the flow, you should do it every boil or every other. It does a lot in keeping the niter out of the final chamber which is where the niter builds up most. Keep your eye on the middle chambers though. Also, if you start seeing little flecks of niter(or big ones) at the draw off point then you should clean it after that boil or sooner.

[BAP]

[QUOTE=wiam;313947]And that line is less than 20 minutes. lol[/QUOTE
Definitely a fine line between a dirty pan and one that starts burning particularly if you are pushing your evaporator hard and running shallow pan depths.