boil the ice

[Mike Van]

I always have, even though I'd heard the reason for discarding it was " only the water freezes, not the sugar" My theory was that at some point if it's cold enough the entire bucket will freeze solid, meaning what, there was never any sugar, or? The pickup from 2 days ago I had a lot of ice, like 100+ chunks, everything from 2" to 4" thick. I feed the chunks in through a big old strainer, works for me. just for a test, I checked my tank [with all the ice too] It was showing almost 3% - So, I let one of the ice chunks melt on a pan & checked it, read 1%. I'm sure the big operators can't mess with it, too much time - I'll boil it -

[motowbrowne]

I boil it too. Especially solid chunks like that. An inch of slushy (you should try testing sugar content on that too) stuff on the top I might throw out, but I generally just leave ice in the buckets.

[scottdevine]

I always have, even though I'd heard the reason for discarding it was " only the water freezes, not the sugar" My theory was that at some point if it's cold enough the entire bucket will freeze solid, meaning what, there was never any sugar, or? The pickup from 2 days ago I had a lot of ice, like 100+ chunks, everything from 2" to 4" thick. I feed the chunks in through a big old strainer, works for me. just for a test, I checked my tank [with all the ice too] It was showing almost 3% - So, I let one of the ice chunks melt on a pan & checked it, read 1%. I'm sure the big operators can't mess with it, too much time - I'll boil it -

my tests revealed the same thing. ice water tested @ 1.3% i boil it

[berkshires]

I don't know this for a fact, but I strongly suspect that overnight ice will have close to the same sugar content as water, but multi-day ice will have much lower sugar content. In other words, if you have several days where it gets above freezing for a few hours, but not warm enough to get a good run, or to melt all the ice. So the ice in the bucket just grows and shrinks for a few days. That ice will have very little sugar in it. Each time it melts a little during the day, I believe the sugar will melt out first. And then each time it freezes again overnight, you get higher and higher concentration of more-or-less pure ice.

[valleyman]

my tests revealed the same thing. ice water tested @ 1.3% i boil it
Scott, I bet if you fell into your storage tank you'd throw your clothes into your pan and boil em off too!

[ennismaple]

I'm sure the big operators can't mess with it, too much time - I'll boil it -

Not true - we just leave it in the tank and it melts as new sap comes in. We don't want to waste sugar any more than the little guys and I don't want to be bothered emptying hundreds of pounds of ice out of tanks!

[Mike Van]

Not true - we just leave it in the tank and it melts as new sap comes in. We don't want to waste sugar any more than the little guys and I don't want to be bothered emptying hundreds of pounds of ice out of tanks! Glad to hear that!

[lew]

I'm with ennis. Plus, that ice keeps the sap cooler longer