Newbie, homemade arch. Would appreciate advise.

[Jigrod]

I think I have first year maple syrup anxiety and I’ve never tapped a tree yet, LOL! Maybe someone can chime in on a few concerns I have with my plan.

First off, I decided last fall 2020 that I needed a new hobby so cooking syrup was going to get a go. I designed and built a small arch with a 39” x 21” divided pan this winter and plan to hang 25 bags.

After lots of reading on this site I’m concerned that first, I might not have enough sap to establish a gradient in my pan with only 25 taps (all woods sugar maple).
Second, I’m cooking on weekends only. From what I have read on here it may take well over 100 gal of sap to establish grade which may take a few weeks to collect (25 taps).
The plan is to boil Fridays and Sundays leaving concentrate in the pan during the week assuming it’s not going to be too warm.

Backup plan (which I’m not too excited about) is to use my divided pan more like a flat pan and finish on LP.

Tapping this coming Saturday, northern Wisco.

[berkshires]

Do I understand correctly that you have only one divider in your 39 x 21 pan? That means half of the area of your full pan (400 square inches) has to turn to syrup before you can draw syrup right off the pan. And drawing that kind of volume off the pan without having a meltdown is also a tall order. But I think you can still do something close: You can get to "nearup" (near-syrup) in your pan, do draws of that, and finish it elsewhere.

GO

[Jigrod]

Thanks for the comments GO. I have two dividers in my pan, kind of hard to see with the original pics.

[berkshires]

Oh that's not too bad, then. You should be able to get a gradient on that. And with 25 taps, once they're all flowing, you should get 50-100 gallon runs. That should be plenty to feed that size pan.

Have fun and let us know how it goes!

Gabe O

[BSHC]

wish i had your skills. That looks really good for what you call Home Made. I would recommend you build a float box or rig up some type of float fill system to keep the depth stable. That should also help setting up a gradient.

[wmick]

I second the float box suggestion.. Lots to look after without monitoring and adding sap.... I built my own... Started out with a small 1/2" float-valve from livestock waterers... Turned out to be too small to keep up, when things got roaring... so now I use one of these. https://www.cdivalve.com/products/detail/r610-series-bob-float-valves It works good. Playing around with different float shapes... Most recently, using a flat tupperware container... it is working well.
Keep the fitting/port between the float box and the pan fairly large as well... it might need to flow a lot of sap in a hurry, and there is basically no head pressure there... Learned from my mistakes.

[Jigrod]

Great info on the float box suggestions. For this year I put a sight glass from Smoky Lake in line with the draw off valve and will trickle feed from the warming pan. Next year float box!

So again I have never cooked syrup although I know a handful of people that do and they make tasty syrup but all of them use the batch pan method. My concern or lack of knowledge is I’m tapping this Saturday and lets just say maybe by next Saturday I have 50 gallons to boil. If I cook it down where I’m out of sap but still maintain 2” in the pan that leaves me with about 6 gallon in the pan so no way that’s syrup yet. Is there a chance the gradient is set up before running out of sap and I can draw off a little? If not, what to do with the remaining 6 gallons in the pan till the following Saturday where I should have more sap to cook?
22119

[wmick]

You can leave it in the pan if your temperatures are nice and cold.... If its just 6 gallons, you might consider draining it and refrigerating it?
You bring back memories for me........ I had about 30-40 buckets, and being a millwright, I decided to build an evaporator... Built a 2ft x 6ft.... Then I realized I needed more taps to fill it... Endless cycle .:)

[berkshires]

My concern or lack of knowledge is I’m tapping this Saturday and lets just say maybe by next Saturday I have 50 gallons to boil. If I cook it down where I’m out of sap but still maintain 2” in the pan that leaves me with about 6 gallon in the pan so no way that’s syrup yet. Is there a chance the gradient is set up before running out of sap and I can draw off a little? If not, what to do with the remaining 6 gallons in the pan till the following Saturday where I should have more sap to cook?
22119

Is there a reason for only boiling once/week? I ask because that's the assumption in your post, but the answer to your question depends on whether that's a really hard and fast requirement, or if you're just using that as a "for example".

Optimally, you'd boil whenever mother nature gives you a run of sap, and if it gets warm, you need to boil your sap from time to time to keep it from spoiling.

For example, you could have a cold snap where the weather never gets above freezing for a week and a half, in which case there's nothing wrong with leaving frozen sap in the pan.

Or you could have a warm spell where it gets to 65 for three days straight, in which case you might not get much sap, but you better find a way to drain your pan or boil, or else it will likely all spoil.

In my case, I'm a two hour drive from my sugarbush, so I simply can't get there more than once a week. If your situation is similar, this thread I created may be helpful to you:

http://mapletrader.com/community/showthread.php?35887-Once-a-week-boil-on-divided-pan

GO

[Jigrod]

Gabe, that thread is spot on to my situation. I’m a little over two hours from my sugarbush and am there every weekend. Still working to pay the bills and there’s no way I replace my income moving up there.

There was talk in the link you sent about a quick mid-week boil. Just wondering what the purpose is for that. Maybe kill off any potential bacteria, etc and by doing this it would extend the shelf life of the semi-sweet left in the pan? It makes sense to me. I have a couple buddies near my sugarbush that will be checking bags for me mid-week, I suppose they could fire things up briefly if needed.

What are your thoughts on leaving sweet in the pan with the sight glass installed? It’s pretty thick glass and open on top, not sure if it freezes how the glass would hold up. I’m guessing a quick call to Smoky Lake would answer that.

[berkshires]

There was talk in the link you sent about a quick mid-week boil. Just wondering what the purpose is for that. Maybe kill off any potential bacteria, etc and by doing this it would extend the shelf life of the semi-sweet left in the pan? It makes sense to me. I have a couple buddies near my sugarbush that will be checking bags for me mid-week, I suppose they could fire things up briefly if needed.

Yep, that's it exactly. Just make sure if they fire it up they know to add a few gallons of fresh sap on the sap end, otherwise you might come back to a charred sticky mess. If it's going to be a warm week - too warm for the sap to run, I guess your only options are draining the pan or adding some water.

Keep in mind as you read that thread that I'm almost as much a newbie as you are. I have been syruping for five years, but this is my first year on a real divided pan. So take any of my thoughts on boiling on a divided pan with a big grain of salt. We are in the same boat though, with the sugarbush so far from home. So any insight we gather should be helpful for both of us.


What are your thoughts on leaving sweet in the pan with the sight glass installed? It’s pretty thick glass and open on top, not sure if it freezes how the glass would hold up. I’m guessing a quick call to Smoky Lake would answer that.

Maybe someone else knows - I don't know what a sight glass in a pan is.

GO

[Jigrod]

The last pic i posted was of the sight glass. Supposedly gives a clearer view of the level of sap in the pan as you are not looking through steam to figure it out. Maybe a gadget but i thought at the very least a fun conversation piece when visitors stop by the sugar shack. I envision syruping kind of like the night before opening gun deer season where if you're not cooking you will be visiting other sugar shacks.

[wmick]

Sight Glass looks really cool... I was picturing something small that would get dirty and opaque... Yours looks like it should work really well. Even with a float box, I see that as being a nice quick visual to keep an eye on things..... With a raging boil going on, it is almost impossible to see exactly where the sap depth is.... I will be interested to hear how it works for you....

[maple flats]

I second the float box suggestion.. Lots to look after without monitoring and adding sap.... I built my own... Started out with a small 1/2" float-valve from livestock waterers... Turned out to be too small to keep up, when things got roaring... so now I use one of these. https://www.cdivalve.com/products/detail/r610-series-bob-float-valves It works good. Playing around with different float shapes... Most recently, using a flat tupperware container... it is working well.
Keep the fitting/port between the float box and the pan fairly large as well... it might need to flow a lot of sap in a hurry, and there is basically no head pressure there... Learned from my mistakes.
If you use the valve linked in the post above, that valve says nothing that would indicate it is lead free. Looking at your concrete block pl;atform you made, be careful about it getting out of level. As the frost comes out of the ground you might need to adjust for level, it should be at most 1/8" off or less. Best would be much closer to perfectly level. If you have buddies near the camp, use them. They can collect the sap, and put it in a clean food grade container, banked in snow. About every 3 days they should fire it up and bring it to a boil. If the temperature gets to the mid 40's then every 2 days, if to 50+ every day will be needed. Building a way to add sap as needed is best, but it doesn't need to be a float box/valve. You could make a warming tank with a lead free drain valve. Set it on top of the pan you made, at one end, the end opposite the draw off (3 sections) then adjust that valve to add a slow steady flow to match the evaporation rate. Then when a thermometer (a good digital maybe) says the syrup at the draw off is 7.3F above the boiling point of water, draw off some very slowly. To get that temperature, boil water until it at a rolling boil and get that temperature, add 7.3F and that's the correct draw off temperature. Be aware, if weather conditions are changing, the boiling point will change with it.

[Jigrod]

Good call on the frost and leveling, It's within 0.125" now but I'm sure frost will move that. I'll have to check it before every boil.

Its kind of hard to see but in the first batch of pics I posted I did make a warming pan that's sitting on top of the main pan in the back. I have a stainless valve for it that I'll use to trickle in sap. In hindsight I'm not sure how well the warming pan will work there as to how much heat it will get but its what I have for this year. I also put a thermometer next to the sight glass and draw off valve.

[therealtreehugger]

Wood fired- once you get it going, and super hot, it will take a looooooong time for it to stop boiling. I don't feel comfortable walking away for at least an hour after feeding it for the last time, and all that boiling means more evaporating, so make sure you stop feeding it long before you run out of sap!

[Jigrod]

Thanks for all of the suggestions and tips. Planning on tapping tomorrow and running a test fire with water in the morning. Assuming my water thaws out, lol

[BCPP]

Wood fired- once you get it going, and super hot, it will take a looooooong time for it to stop boiling. I don't feel comfortable walking away for at least an hour after feeding it for the last time, and all that boiling means more evaporating, so make sure you stop feeding it long before you run out of sap!

Totally agree. I often stop a boil in afternoon and restart the next day. I stop firing round 3pm nd stay there until about 5pm. By that point firebox is empty and all coals are in the ash pan. Even so, latent heat from fore brick and the coals evaporates off about 5gal of sap overnight.

[Jigrod]

Just an update on the evaporator and pan I built this winter. My first time ever boiling sap this past weekend and I believe it was a success. Saturday with temps in the upper 40’s and protected from a big south wind I was doing a solid 10 gallons an hour, probably closer to 12 in the last hour of cooking.

Sunday was much cooler and the wind out of the north where I’m not protected from. I was boiling off around 8 gallons an hour. So I learned at the least I need a tarp or something on the north side of my sugar shack!

Really liked the sight glass for maintaining sap depth using a valve on the warming pan to trickle sap in.

In all I boiled down 80 gallons of sap this past weekend. The third channel in my pan on the drawoff side had color and had a nice sweet taste to it. Temperature at drawoff did not go above 212. How many more gallons of sap do you think I’ll need to run in order to sweeten the pan? Pan is roughly 40” x 20”.

[Pdiamond]

It usually takes 100 gallons for me to sweeten my 2 x 4 pans.

[berkshires]

How many more gallons of sap do you think I’ll need to run in order to sweeten the pan? Pan is roughly 40” x 20”.

How deep are you running it? If you were running it around an inch I would think you would start to see the temp come up soon, but at two inches you might only be halfway there.

GO

[Jigrod]

I was running 2" deep. From everything I've read on here 2" sounds like a safe place to run. Hoping to have at least 75 gallons to push through it later this week.

[berkshires]

I was running 2" deep. From everything I've read on here 2" sounds like a safe place to run. Hoping to have at least 75 gallons to push through it later this week.

At two inches deep, that should do it I'd think. Good luck!

Cheers,

GO

[Bgreisch]

I have the SL Dauntless and the pan is 20"x48" and it took like 100 gallons to start drawing off the first time, running about 1 3/4 to 2 inches.

Bryan

[Jigrod]

I was able to boil off another 100 gallons of sap this past weekend for a total of 180 gallons of sap and still waiting to draw off syrup. Sunday my temp gauge was creeping up to 217 so I started checking with my Murphys cup and hydrometer. Never doing this before what I ended up doing was screwing up my gradient. I was using the draw off valve to fill, dump and refill the Murphys cup and believe I pulled forward more sap than syrup. Over the course of an hour or so of checking density the temp started to drop to 214 and never recovered before we ran out of sap.

What’s the proper way to fill my test cup for checking density without screwing up the gradient? An old timer recommended using a ladle and filling and dumping from the back of the syrup channel away from the draw off.

We also noticed Sunday that our evaporation rate has slowed down (6-7) gallons per hour. It was warm out and no real change to firewood. My thought was the more “syrup” in the pan the less evaporation.

A couple other notes that may explain my lack of being able to draw off syrup. I drained the pan yesterday to get the sap/syrup in the fridge for the week as it will be pretty warm for a few day. I took out a solid 7 gallons and was expecting only 5 ish based on the sight glass depth and pan size using an online calculator. I’m guessing I got the ruler sticker on the sight glass off but will verify once I level and fill the evaporator this coming weekend. I’ve probably been running a lot deeper than I thought.

Again I appreciate all of the comments and suggestions, first year at this and just trying to learn.



2228722288

[berkshires]

Jigrod - a few thoughts:

If I were you, on this small evaporator, I would just draw off when you get to temp, and finish on propane or in the house.

Question: Do you have bungs between channels when you're not boiling? If not, all the gradient you created the first time will be gone before the second boil. So you've averaged the nearup in the last channel with the near-sap in the first channel.

I'm going to assume you don't have bungs set between boils, since you haven't mentioned them. Correct me if I'm wrong.

After doing this twice now if it's all mixed up again next time you boil, you're going to have a LOT of sugar in the pan. Including in the first two channels. This means that on your next boil when you do get to syrup, you are going to have a *monster* draw. This is especially true since you have only three channels. Be careful! You might start the draw at 219, and then before you know it, it's spiking to 240, foaming all over the place, and scorching the pan. If I were you I would:


Have an "oh s#it bucket" handy
Start your draw at least a degree under
If you see the temp starting to spike, crank open both the draw-off valve and the valve of sap entering the pan



As for your question about why it's taken so long to get to syrup, my thoughts are:

- If you don't have bungs between channels, it's all mixing back up
- As you say, you're probably running it somewhat high.
- With only three channels, assuming there's a lot of mixing within each channel, you need to make more syrup to get to syrup in the last channel than you would if your pan was divided into four channels.
- I don't know how sweet your sap is - if it's running at 1.5% that means more sap required
- If you have a lot of soot built up on the bottom of your pan, I don't know how much that affects heat transfer, but I'm sure it could be a factor.

Cheers,

Gabe

[Jigrod]

Thanks for the thoughts Gabe.

You are correct that I do not have bungs between the channels for down time. My master plan was to shear a couple pcs of stainless last week at work to make bungs and use them this past weekend. Wouldn’t ya know it I made it a whole year and finally got covid last Monday! Needless to say I haven’t been to work and didn’t have any stainless laying around. I’ll take care of that later this week when I’m back at work.

Sap started out around 3% and the stuff I checked recently was at 2%.

I agree there will be a lot of sugar in the pan next boil. I may have to come to realize that finishing in this pan at least this year isn’t going to happen. Hoping to have 50 gallons of sap by Saturday and will give it go.

Jigrod / Chris

[woodguyrob]

Chris, you mentioned your sticker being off on your sight glass. I have a site glass on my SL Flat pan on the Dauntless. I never used the sticker. When I boil now I fill the pan w/ 4 gallons (about 1"depth ) and use a red sharpie to make a line on the glass. I add another 2 gallons (2"depth) and mark the line with a Blue sharpie. Makes it easy top see where you are. This year I ran it closer to 1 " depth and it boiled really well. Sharpie washes off easily.

[Jigrod]

Well I finally got to draw off some syrup this past weekend! We only had 25 gallons of sap to run but it was enough to reestablish the gradient within about 45 minutes once boiling. Initial draw was only a quart or two. About an hour after that I drew off maybe another gallon. Still have at least three gallons of syrup in the pan and if the weather holds true I should have around 50 gallons of sap to push through this Friday. I’ll shut er down after that and finish what’s in the pan on a turkey fryer.

Pretty satisfying to see things finally come together. Like a stated earlier I was running too deep the previous weekend which prevented syrup draw off. Lesson learned. I’ll add another dozen or so taps next year so I have enough volume to get me to syrup a little faster. I would say if I’m running 1.50” deep I need a minimum of 150 gallons of sap before I’ll be able to draw off syrup.

Thanks again for everyone’s help and comments!