Sizing a water jacket canner

[Bruce L]

Just wondering how you size for a canner? One that will hold all days production?,( would have to be pretty big), or one that will hold a few hours worth of boiling? Currently drawing off syrup at 12 gallons per hour

[maple flats]

I sized mine by what my typical batches are to bottle. I got a 16 gal because of that. Most of my SS barrels are 26.5 gal, thus when I am bottling from a barrel, I then do it in 2 batches. For that I pump the entire barrel into my finisher, bring it up to about 200 F, then I actually filter it again and send the refiltered syrup to the bottler. When the bottler is near empty, I check the temp in the finisher, if it is still at 195 or more I just send it thru the filter and to the bottler, if below 195 I bring it back up to 200 and send it thru the filter and into the bottler.