Second equipment purchase thoughts?

[Ntatar]

I work at a college just outside of Boston. We taped 12 trees and had a great season! Our first investment was in taps and buckets. We don't have to purchase pots or an evaporator bc we can cook down the sap in our dining hall under the vent hoods. I'm thinking a brix meter/gauge and/or a canning/filter unit should be the next investment - we used coffee filters this round which worked ok but it was VERY time consuming and didn't capture all the sugar sand. Thoughts or feedback on these next purchases? If those sound good to you, any recommendations on canning/filtering units? My instinct is to get the double 8 qt filter size as we plan to go from 12 taps to 20 next Feb.

[unc23win]

I think a hydrometer would be a smart purchase and maybe try a wool cone filter (or 2) as they work better and can be washed and reused.

[barnbc76]

Are you using stove tops or something else to boil? i like the suggestion of a filter and hydrometer. I use a synthetic cone filter with prefilter works well enough. Not sure you would need a caner/ unit for that small an operation.

[BSD]

hydrometer, cone filter and a 12 pack of pre-filters. you can make quality syrup with those three items. take any of the three out and the quality will not be good for long term. ie, you can eat maple syrup that is under done if you consume it in a few weeks, but if you let it sit around it's going to grow all sorts of funk.

[Ntatar]

Definitely got a wide range of sugar sand with the batches I did (collected around 150 gallons of sap and cooked down 8 times). We refrigerated sap as it came in and cooked down once a week. We also tried to do a good job on the bottling end, working with hot syrup and preheated bottles to seal things tight. Do you think I should still be worried about funk because I used coffee filters and have some sugar sand?

[Cedar Eater]

Neither the hydrometer nor the filter are essential. You can tell if you have boiled near enough to syrup by temperature and the sheeting test. You can let the niter settle out over time. Because you can do both of these, you can focus on what would make the syrup making experience more fun or less tedious. For me, that meant an alarming thermometer called a ChefAlarm by ThermoWorks. It allows me to not be watching the boil continuously until I hear the alarms go off. I set mine for 216, then 218. My syrup is never finished before 218. The ChefAlarm has a high alarm and a low alarm and you can also set timers. As my syrup temp rises, I raise the low alarm setpoint in case the liquid level drops low enough to expose the probe to air. The combination of timers and alarms can make it much easier to focus on your studies while you boil.

[wishlist]

As others have said, hydrometer and some cone filters. Won't break the bank and you can make some quality syrup with those tools .

[Clinkis]

Have to echo the hydrometer. They simplify the finishing process and help take out a lot of the guess work.

[retubjb]

Sugar sand does not affect the syrup at all. No worries about spoilage unless you did not boil uyour sap long enough to get it to syrup density. How did you determine that it was at the syrup stage?

[Ntatar]

Cooked till it was 219 degrees on a 5" digital food thermometer
-NT

[berkshires]

Cooked till it was 219 degrees on a 5" digital food thermometer
-NT

That alone is definitely not sufficient to know you're at syrup. In fact, I have never had a batch that was done when my thermometer (it's a good digital thermometer) first hit 219. If you know what to look for, you can make good syrup by a combination of going 7.1 degrees over boiling point of water at that specific time/location, plus a sheeting test. Otherwise, a hydrometer plus a thermometer will get you there.

Cheers,

Gabe

[johnallin]

Hydrometer and a test cup. As long as you can test it right off the pan, and quickly, you should be at 211 degrees. Your hydrometer will float at the top red line (hot test line).
This may set you back about $50 for both; but you'll be light years ahead of where you are at present. Filtering could be your next phase - but you need to make syrup first.
Sure you can test using sheeting and taking temperature, but there are better and easier ways to do it.