Tweegs
03-08-2017, 01:11 PM
Thought I’d kick off a fun little thread.
If you’ve managed to scorch your pan this year, do tell!
Sometimes venting can be a salve for the bruised ego.
First, I’ve just gotta know…Has anyone, besides me, ever made a lollipop in their draw off valve?
We were on our second boil of the season Sunday night and the thermometer said 7* above boiling, time to test.
We just weren’t thinking. This was also our first draw for the season.
We pull a test cup full of near-up, the hydrometer bottoms out. No problem, pour it back in the pan.
My wife was doing the testing, I was a bit puzzled, as moments before that draw I looked into the box at the draw off port and the size of the bubbles said it was really close. After a few years of doing this, you get a feel for when it “looks” right.
My back is turned, I’m headed to check the float box and inlet side of the syrup pan. My wife asks if she should just pour it “in here”. Silly question, I think, of course she should just pour it back in the pan, so I say yes. Then it hit me, we added a syrup pan hood last year, she’s short. I turn around to witness her dumping the test batch back into the box for the draw off port. Now all that near-up is between the draw off and the thermometer.
I cringe for a moment but quickly rationalize that it might be OK, it was nearly syrup after all, and maybe it would have been if we weren’t running 8% concentrate. I also realize that at this point it’s probably better to keep my mouth shut and preserve the peace. I had answered yes.
It wasn’t 15 seconds later that the thermometer read 10* above boiling. Somethings wrong.
I’m on the float box/inlet side now. “Good here” I tell her, “Draw, we’ll worry about the density when we get past this”. “Ummm”, she shoots back.
We’ve been married 15 years and can communicate rather well without even speaking. “Umm”, I’ve learned, is my cue to slam the float, which I do.
“Ahhh” she says in a quiver.
I’ve got the OS bucket maneuver down pretty well, just lift and dump, aiming not required. Because we’ve been here a time or two, I also know that my wife’s quivering “Ahhh” is short for “OS!!!” which directly translates to “Deploy the bucket!”
I did, but it was too late. She watched the thermometer rocket past boiling + 30*.
And then there was that all too familiar stench.
The bucket dump forced a thick pile of foam into the draw off box. It actually looked rather appetizing. Dense, golden brown, with a crispy caramelized glaze.
I did, however, resist the urge to give it a try.
The next day revealed we had scorched about 60% of the last channel in the syrup pan. Fortunately, there was very little warp.
A couple hours of scrubbing later we were back in business. Oh, and another half hour to clear the draw off plumbing.
It was as if someone had cram packed it full of Milk Duds.
In hindsight, we figure that pouring that first draw back in through the draw off box pushed denser syrup backwards towards the syrup pan inlet, which cooled the thermometer, which fooled us. It’s believed we were making syrup further back in the pan and we were in trouble a whole lot sooner than we realized.
So learn from us and don’t pour a test cup back in from where you got it. We normally dump a too thin test in the channel prior to the last, and would have done so, had we been thinking.
If you’ve managed to scorch your pan this year, do tell!
Sometimes venting can be a salve for the bruised ego.
First, I’ve just gotta know…Has anyone, besides me, ever made a lollipop in their draw off valve?
We were on our second boil of the season Sunday night and the thermometer said 7* above boiling, time to test.
We just weren’t thinking. This was also our first draw for the season.
We pull a test cup full of near-up, the hydrometer bottoms out. No problem, pour it back in the pan.
My wife was doing the testing, I was a bit puzzled, as moments before that draw I looked into the box at the draw off port and the size of the bubbles said it was really close. After a few years of doing this, you get a feel for when it “looks” right.
My back is turned, I’m headed to check the float box and inlet side of the syrup pan. My wife asks if she should just pour it “in here”. Silly question, I think, of course she should just pour it back in the pan, so I say yes. Then it hit me, we added a syrup pan hood last year, she’s short. I turn around to witness her dumping the test batch back into the box for the draw off port. Now all that near-up is between the draw off and the thermometer.
I cringe for a moment but quickly rationalize that it might be OK, it was nearly syrup after all, and maybe it would have been if we weren’t running 8% concentrate. I also realize that at this point it’s probably better to keep my mouth shut and preserve the peace. I had answered yes.
It wasn’t 15 seconds later that the thermometer read 10* above boiling. Somethings wrong.
I’m on the float box/inlet side now. “Good here” I tell her, “Draw, we’ll worry about the density when we get past this”. “Ummm”, she shoots back.
We’ve been married 15 years and can communicate rather well without even speaking. “Umm”, I’ve learned, is my cue to slam the float, which I do.
“Ahhh” she says in a quiver.
I’ve got the OS bucket maneuver down pretty well, just lift and dump, aiming not required. Because we’ve been here a time or two, I also know that my wife’s quivering “Ahhh” is short for “OS!!!” which directly translates to “Deploy the bucket!”
I did, but it was too late. She watched the thermometer rocket past boiling + 30*.
And then there was that all too familiar stench.
The bucket dump forced a thick pile of foam into the draw off box. It actually looked rather appetizing. Dense, golden brown, with a crispy caramelized glaze.
I did, however, resist the urge to give it a try.
The next day revealed we had scorched about 60% of the last channel in the syrup pan. Fortunately, there was very little warp.
A couple hours of scrubbing later we were back in business. Oh, and another half hour to clear the draw off plumbing.
It was as if someone had cram packed it full of Milk Duds.
In hindsight, we figure that pouring that first draw back in through the draw off box pushed denser syrup backwards towards the syrup pan inlet, which cooled the thermometer, which fooled us. It’s believed we were making syrup further back in the pan and we were in trouble a whole lot sooner than we realized.
So learn from us and don’t pour a test cup back in from where you got it. We normally dump a too thin test in the channel prior to the last, and would have done so, had we been thinking.