Finishing up a boil.

[Mille705]

So how do you finish / empty you pans at the end? Between boils we dump the finish pan to clean and then add that syrup back to the pan on the next boil. Now we are looking at 5-6 days between runs and wondered how do we get the sugar out of the flue pan. Yes I know we can drain it but don’t have snow or the ability to store 40 gallons in a frig. What do you do?

[ecolbeck]

I’m up against the same issue. I think some folks do a short boil to sterilize every few days.

[maple flats]

I only empty my flue pan when it needs a cleaning. In that case I drain it into a barrel I keep under the drain valve. Then I have a pan washer, which I run using permeate. When clean I pump that barrel back into the flue pan. If the flue pan does not need cleaning I let it set until my next boil. Just make sure it boiled hard before you shut down.
If it goes 3 days, I fire it up, bring it to a real good boil and let it cool again. When I do that sometimes I need to add permeate to maintain level, sometimes I don't.