cleaning evaporato

[old tom]

What if I poured a gal or 2 of vinegar and filled the evaporator with water and fired it up. Would that help clean it?

[bmbmkr]

Yes. And at the end of the season you can leave your last sweet or even sap in the pans for a few weeks, it will turn to vinegar and soak into the niter and leave your pans sparkling like new with very little scrubbing. There are dozens of posts on here about that, some including myself leave the pans soaking in maple vinegar for a month or two after the season.

[buckeye gold]

I do like bmbmkr and do the sap soak, If you catch it before it molds or get's too funky you can filter off some of the Maple Vinegar for salad dressings and cooking. You'll need to pasteurize it though. I just heat it to 180 for a few minutes to stabilize it. If it goes too far the mother consumes the whole pan and then spoils. Doesn't make any difference for cleaning but ruins vinegar. I also made vinegar independent of the evaporator....actually works better for vingegar. I save some mother in the fridge from each year.

[old tom]

Thank you both for the reply.

[Jeff E]

Wow....when I tried that pan cleaning method, nothing I saw in the evaporator made me think 'I'll put that on my salad' :) :)

I use chemicals now, like vinegar or milk stone remover acid, or pan cleaner from a Maple dealer. Less mold in the sugar house is better for me. Also I don't have the waiting time.
Heat is the key to get the niter loosened up.

[ennismaple]

We generally leave the fermented sap in the pans until it makes you gag when you come through the front door of the camp. I've never once been tempted to eat it! I've seen the contents get so ropey that it would barely drain out a 1" pipe. It kills a large patch of grass on the hill beside the camp where we've drained the contents.

We drained and washed our pans last weekend after letting them sit for 7 weeks. We had more tartar than ever on the flues and they came clean with a little pressure washer time. The syrup pan is sparkling!

[maple flats]

I think your first idea would dilute the vinegar too much. Cutting the vinegar with too much water is not a good idea. I use straight vinegar, but many get good results adding 1 or 2, maybe 3 gal water and get good results. Reducing the strength more than that I'd think would dilute it too much.

[buckeye gold]

if you want any vinegar, you got to keep an eye on it. Heat and time just makes it spoil, as your culture dies. By the time most check their pans it's a slimy goo. It doesn't always make vinegar. When it does the vinegar lies under the mother or goo. Light and heat affect this process, I cover my pan. Like I said I do my vinegar in 2 gallon glass jugs when I want true usable vinegar, but I have seen it come off the pan. A sugar content of about 10% is best for vinegar, too sweet and it totally ferments and then rots.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

We use the acid from the maple dealer. Our pans were sitting empty and dirty until 2 weeks ago. Filled them up with acid/water. Turned the oil burner on and waited for a boil to start. Shut it off and went back a week later and used a wash cloth to remove anything left. As mentioned, heat is key with the acid. Pans are shiny new. Shack serves as more than just a sugar house so letting sap sit isn’t an option.

[Bruce L]

We have someone near us that goes to farmers markets with the vinegar,people lap it up because it has the term “ maple” in it. Funny thing was one day an elderly outspoken lady was at his booth and declared that the vinegar was the garbage that she knew we cleaned our pans with and dumped. Really hard to keep from laughing out loud at that comment

[anchorhd]

We use 50/50 distilled water and white vineger.

[jrgagne99]

Standing up on soapbox here.

If at all possible, I don't think we sugarmakers should be letting that last bit of sweet from the season sit for weeks or months just to use the acidity of the moldy, sludgy mess to "automatically" clean the pans. We are making a food product here. We need to convey a high level of cleanliness and attention to detail to the public in all aspects of our operations. Otherwise, we are putting our reputation at risk. If people lose confidence in our product, sales will suffer. Our industry is not "too big to fail". We need to strive to maintain the sugarhouse in an inspection-worthy state at all times. Unless we want the regulators to start coming down on us even harder!

getting down from soapbox now.

[BAP]

Standing up on soapbox here.

If at all possible, I don't think we sugarmakers should be letting that last bit of sweet from the season sit for weeks or months just to use the acidity of the moldy, sludgy mess to "automatically" clean the pans. We are making a food product here. We need to convey a high level of cleanliness and attention to detail to the public in all aspects of our operations. Otherwise, we are putting our reputation at risk. If people lose confidence in our product, sales will suffer. Our industry is not "too big to fail". We need to strive to maintain the sugarhouse in an inspection-worthy state at all times. Unless we want the regulators to start coming down on us even harder!

getting down from soapbox now.
Well you aren’t leaving the sour sap in the pan for next year. What is the difference of using a natural cleaning process over using a bunch of caustic chemicals?

[tcross]

so, make vinegar in your pans to clean with, or buy it? not sure the issue. no one is around my sugar house when it's time to clean up for the year regardless.

[jrgagne99]

I just think it's a bad look when I hear and read this sort of thing going on in our industry. For example, industry publications describing how disgusting the stuff in the pan looks and smells after letting the sweet sit all summer long. Or suggestions to leave the fermented sap in the pans until it makes you queazy to even smell it. If restaurants ever made public statements like these about how they clean their kitchens, their business would surely suffer. I think we should be a cautious about this sort of stuff, especially in today's climate.

If the general public gets the perception that this is how most sugarmakers generally do things, it is an open invite to more FDA regulation and oversight, and I think that is something most sugarmakers do not want to see.

[maple flats]

jrgagne99, read the cleaning methods in The North American Maple Syrup Producer's manual, the bible of all things maple, the method you don't think should be left out there is one of the proper ways to clean your evaporator.

[buckeye gold]

It's just fermented sap and then vinegar. Ever drink any wine, whiskey or beer....similar process. Sure it will mold if left long enough and even spoil, but so will any fermented food. I will continue to do it and be unapologetic. Besides the pan gets washed with a chlorine solution and boiled then flushed before any syrup is made. I have shown and discussed my cleaning method with many customers and they think it's neat someone figured it out. Most accept it as a natural organic process. Believe me I spent a whole career dealing with the FDA and even held and operated INAD (investigative new animal drug) permits for drug approval. This is so far off the FDA's radar they would barely blink at it.

[jrgagne99]

Maybe I should clarify. I don't have an issue with creating the homemade vinegar to clean the pans, as long as it gets taken care of in a timely manner.

The North American Maple Syrup Producer's manual doesn't say to leave the sap in there until it turns into a ropey, sludgy, moldy mess that makes you gag when you walk in the sugarhouse on that July or August morning.

I've read first hand descriptions of situations like this on Maple Trader and in the Maple News and I just don't think that's the kind of kitchen we want to be advertising for ourselves.

[ennismaple]

Standing up on soapbox here.

If at all possible, I don't think we sugarmakers should be letting that last bit of sweet from the season sit for weeks or months just to use the acidity of the moldy, sludgy mess to "automatically" clean the pans. We are making a food product here. We need to convey a high level of cleanliness and attention to detail to the public in all aspects of our operations. Otherwise, we are putting our reputation at risk. If people lose confidence in our product, sales will suffer. Our industry is not "too big to fail". We need to strive to maintain the sugarhouse in an inspection-worthy state at all times. Unless we want the regulators to start coming down on us even harder!

getting down from soapbox now. Would you rather convey the message of using highly acidic cleaners that run the risk of contamination of next year's sap or the groundwater around your camp or using a natural method that utilizes every last bit of the sap we take from the tree? Our pans are quadruple rinsed between being drained and any new sap being put in them so there is zero risk to the public. While this forum is public it is far from being an advertisement to the public. There are many 'dirty jobs' associated with all aspects of food preparation that honestly most consumers would rather not know about.

[jrgagne99]

Options for pan cleaning fluids:

1) Mixture of water and approved food-grade pan acid
2) Mixture of water and regular white vinegar
3) Homemade vinegar from fermented sap, used in a timely manner
4) Ropey, sludgy, moldy mess that makes you gag because you waited until July/August

Most customers are probably fine with options 1, 2, and 3.

Option 4 should be avoided. That's all I'm trying to say here.

[therealtreehugger]

So what if you leave your ropey sludgy mess beyond July/August . . . until it starts to get cold again, and doesn't smell because it is too cold? Would there be a problem with that? Would it - dry up and get crusty? damage the pan somehow (probably not)? turn into a swamp? or would it not work to clean the pan? Do you have to catch the yuck before it gets too old if you want it to still clean your pan?

[maple flats]

Just because the North American Maple Producers bible doesn't say it smells bad, that in fact is when it works best. Then the pans get cleaned ande rinsed with good potable water and dried.

[vtbackyardmaple]

In the culinary world we use baking soda. Let it soak with water (a paste not a liquid-soak for hrs) and use a puddy blade/steel wool/green scrubby and a lot of elbow grease. Then I would soak it with vinegar solution to sanitize it. Then regular soap and water. Miter might need to be used depending if you burned it at all.
If it is really bad vomiting is also a possible concern. I've cleaned some really nasty stuff in my life, and yes, I've experienced it.

[Zucker Lager]

So what if you leave your ropey sludgy mess beyond July/August . . . until it starts to get cold again, and doesn't smell because it is too cold? Would there be a problem with that? Would it - dry up and get crusty? damage the pan somehow (probably not)? turn into a swamp? or would it not work to clean the pan? Do you have to catch the yuck before it gets too old if you want it to still clean your pan?
I would be worried about freezing...........that could damage the pan and piping Jay

[therealtreehugger]

Nooooo, way too long.

However, during maple season, I leave sweet in the pan, and it freezes, not hard, but a thick slush. That doesn’t hurt. I bet it wouldn’t freeze too hard if there were enough solute of some type. Just speculating.