Chasing the sweet with water

[DrTimPerkins]

I hear a lot of folks this year mention "chasing with water." I assume what people mean is that when they run out of sap or concentrate, they will feed water into the evaporator (via the normal sap/concentrate pipe), which serves to steepen the sugar gradient in the pans, and will push a bit more syrup from the pans until a new gradient is established and drawoff ceases. When you're done, there is still a lot of sugar left in the pans.

While this works, and will get you a little more sugar out of it (the amount depends on the size of the pan and whether you're boiling sap or concentrate and what the level of concentrate is), there are a couple of methods that perhaps some people can use that will get them even more syrup.

1. Don't chase with water, but instead draw off all the sweet and put it in a finish pan or turkey pot and boil it down to syrup.

If the volume is too much for that method, you could try:

2. Valve off or plug off the frontpan from the backpan. Drain the backpan and put it all (or as much as will fit) into the frontpan. It might be really deep, but that's OK. Put water (permeate if possible) into the tank feeding the evaporator and start it flowing. Start boiling in the evaporator...periodically mix syrup among all the front pan partitions with a scoop or by drawing off and then dumping it across all the partitions. Eventually the entire frontpan will come up to syrup density at which point it can all be drawn off as syrup.

[Potters3]

We have a 30"x12' rig, we try to boil 15% concentrate most of the time. Harder late season with smaller sap flows. We will get 30 to 40 gallons off the rig when we finish. This is how we do it.

1. drain flue pan to head tank.
2. fill flue pan with permeate, and have a tank ready to add more as needed.
3. pipe the head tank to the syrup pan, we us a piece of 3/4" mainline with a ball valve to adjust flow.
4. fire up and go, add from the head tank to keep up with the front pan, try to maintain a normal pan depth, draw almost like normal.
5. when head tank is empty, shut down and finish what is left in the front pan in the finisher. If I time it right what is left is almost syrup and takes very little finishing

[Walling's Maple Syrup]

On our last boil, I will get the rig as low as possible (we have a 4x14) usually I try to get 1/2" below the flues(we have air injectors). I'll drain flue pan into a 50 gallon barrel and boil permeate in flue pan. I will finish the sweet from the back pan in the front pans boiling on low fire. I pump it in in about 5 gallon increments or as fast as syrup is being drawn off keeping the level in the pans about an 1-1/2". I set the draw off about 2 brix heavy and shut evaporator down when level in front pans gets about 1". Since I've been drawing heavy, I keep adding from the front pans till the brix is perfect which most generally is about everything in the front pans. I tried the " pushing the sweet out" method one year and there was just too much waste.
Neil

[Russell Lampron]

I drain my flue pan and fill it with water. I keep the garden hose handy to top up the flue pan as needed. I put my finisher pan on top of my front pan and fill it with the concentrate from the flue pan. As I'm boiling I drain the finisher into one float box and draw off from the other. When the finisher pan is empty I shut down and adjust the density of the syrup that I drew off with the sweet in the front pan. If I need to I add water from the flue pan to chase the sweet across.

[Sugarmaker]

Folks,
Our method to finish:
This year we pumped the cold sweet from the flue pan into the front pan for the last two boils, which were Saturday and Sunday of the Taste and Tour (March 14th and 15th) Filled the smaller head tank with water and the flue pan with water. (blocked off from front). So the sap in the front pan was maybe 10 brix and 6 inches deep (maybe 60 gallons in the front pan) when we started. Simmered both days and made 5 gallons of syrup late Sunday afternoon. Let water in to push most of the syrup out the draw off. Probably lost a couple gallons of syrup. But the folks love coming into the sugarhouse to the smell of syrup being made. Of course it was VERY dark syrup with dark robust flavor. Will be great for Maple Mustard and or Maple BBQ sauces.
Regards,
Chris