Leaving sweetened pans for 4.5 days??

[tgormley358]

I boiled yesterday Saturday, but will be out of town starting tomorrow Monday afternoon and not back til late Wednesday night, so I can boil on thursday morning, but that's 4.5 days. Temps here in central MA during that time are from high 20s to low 40s. I had planned to boil tomorrow before leaving assuming we'd have some sap flowing, but there's almost none. Would you go ahead and re-boil today or tomorrow morning before I leave, without any new sap, to extend the life of what's in the pans? I can probably collect 5-10 gallons in buckets if necessary to help it along.

Is my other option to boil and draw off what i can, tossing the rest? How do you do this at the end of a season when your pans are full in a raised flue continuous flow rig? Do you just add water to the flue pan when it gets low enough and there's no more new sap? How do you first allow all the existing boiled sap in the back pan to make it into the syrup pan so you're not wasting any?

[wnybassman]

The only time I'd have a problem leaving it that long is when it is warm out. I have left mine a week or two before with temps below freezing. You're somewhere in the middle. If you could scrape together 10 gallons for tomorrow I would fire it up long enough to boil that off. Then you will have no problem. Be sure to bring it to a boil after you flood the pan at the end.

[Michael Greer]

Do what you can to get that building chilled down. A shady building with a concrete floor can hold a lot of cold but you've got to get rid of whatever heat is in there now.

[SeanD]

Ditto - You can give it it a quick boil to kill what's in there so it reduces the growth time. Just be sure that there's enough liquid in there that after the boil (and continues to evaporate), the flues/bottom of the pan are still covered.

Don't toss anything unless you have to! I've had to dump a flue pan before - and that sucks. Last year I had to dump what I pulled off the flue pan into buckets. That sucked, but a little less since I didn't need to clean the pan.

For the end of the season, after your last boil with fresh sap coming in, drain everything off the back pan, fill the back pan with water and use the sweet you pulled to feed a boil just using the front pan. You make syrup and clean a pan at the same time.

To save time, boil a little longer after flooding the last boil so you don't have to pull off so much - just be careful not to boil too much off and expose your flues.

[Russell Lampron]

As long as the forecast is somewhat correct you won't have a problem leaving sap in your evaporator that long. The overnight lows will be enough to keep it from spoiling.

[tgormley358]

Thanks all. I gather 7-8 gallons this morning and brought her to a boil, so i felt pretty good leaving it til thursday. Best laid plans....injured my back which canceled my trip out of town, so now i'm here for the week. But i learned some things in the process.