berkshires
04-10-2017, 12:17 PM
I had a strange experience I thought I'd share with you fellow mapletraders. Maybe it's something some of you have seen before. Basically it was a batch with super-high niter, and this seems to have caused the boiling point to lower. Here's the back story:
I have been using a cone filter, and after each time I filter and bottle, I stick the filter in the freezer. Then next time I boil, I toss it in the hot sap to get all the syrup out of the orlon filter and into the next batch (but not the pre-filters, that have most of the niter in them). So I did my final boil of the season and filtered and bottled over the weekend. That left me with a few pre-filters and an orlon filter with a fair amount of syrup in them, and no more boils. So I tossed them in a pot with a little water to get the sugar out. Then I let it sit to cool down, and poured off the syrup-water, leaving a lot of niter behind. I then cooked that sugar-water down into a little micro-batch, that I figured I'd just leave in the fridge for a month or so to settle out naturally for my own personal use.
Okay so far so good. Here comes the weird part. Normally I use a thermometer to get close, and then use a hydrometer at the end. But this time when I got to 217, the pot started foaming up a lot (little tiny bubbles, like when it's getting to syrup). I figured this was because there was a ton of niter in this batch. It was kind of a pain to deal with, but I didn't think anything more about it. Then when it got to 219 I measured it in the hydrometer. Now normally when I first get to 219 I'm one or two brix down from syrup, and I just keep testing until I get there. But this time my first measurement I was about three or four brix over! I couldn't believe it, so I kept checking - no doubt about it, I was way over syrup at 219. I had just finished my regular batch, which finished as normal at around 219.5. So the only explanation was that all the extra niter had suppressed the boil temperature. I went ahead and added distilled water until I got it down to syrup.
Has anyone else ever seen this?
Gabe
I have been using a cone filter, and after each time I filter and bottle, I stick the filter in the freezer. Then next time I boil, I toss it in the hot sap to get all the syrup out of the orlon filter and into the next batch (but not the pre-filters, that have most of the niter in them). So I did my final boil of the season and filtered and bottled over the weekend. That left me with a few pre-filters and an orlon filter with a fair amount of syrup in them, and no more boils. So I tossed them in a pot with a little water to get the sugar out. Then I let it sit to cool down, and poured off the syrup-water, leaving a lot of niter behind. I then cooked that sugar-water down into a little micro-batch, that I figured I'd just leave in the fridge for a month or so to settle out naturally for my own personal use.
Okay so far so good. Here comes the weird part. Normally I use a thermometer to get close, and then use a hydrometer at the end. But this time when I got to 217, the pot started foaming up a lot (little tiny bubbles, like when it's getting to syrup). I figured this was because there was a ton of niter in this batch. It was kind of a pain to deal with, but I didn't think anything more about it. Then when it got to 219 I measured it in the hydrometer. Now normally when I first get to 219 I'm one or two brix down from syrup, and I just keep testing until I get there. But this time my first measurement I was about three or four brix over! I couldn't believe it, so I kept checking - no doubt about it, I was way over syrup at 219. I had just finished my regular batch, which finished as normal at around 219.5. So the only explanation was that all the extra niter had suppressed the boil temperature. I went ahead and added distilled water until I got it down to syrup.
Has anyone else ever seen this?
Gabe