how long can sweet pans sit?

[canaanmaple]

when the pans are sweet, can they safely sit for 3 to 4 days or so and not sour if the weather turns too cold for sap to run? Curious if the boiling process pastuerized it good enough to not worry about souring. We had a few days in the 60s, and I know what was in the collection tanks was a little cloudy when I went to drain, scrub and rinse so got me worried about whats in the pans sitting there now even though we are kind of cold and snowy this week.

[ecolbeck]

Depends on temperatures. If warm out, then reboil every few days to maintain sterility.

[NhShaun]

In the early parts of the season i think you will be perfectly fine with 3 or 4 days. Once it gets more warm and sunny each day and the bugs start showing up it's a little different. If you're real worried, you could always drain your sweet from the front pan into a bucket and put it in the fridge or pack around it with some snow or ice. Shouldn't have an issue reestablishing the gradient once you dump it back in and start boiling again.

[MISugarDaddy]

Our sugarhouse is kept heated to a minimum of 50 degrees, so if we are not going to boil for more than 2 days, we drain the evaporator completely and store the contents in pails in an unheated area that is quite cold. It gives us an opportunity to clean the syrup pan and to rinse out the flue pan before we put the contents back into the evaporator when we are ready to boil again. When we are emptying the evaporator, we keep the syrup pan and flue pan contents separated.
Gary

[MillbrookMaple]

If it is too cold to run and you have an unheated sap house then no problem, Mine just turns into a slushy ice and keeps until I boil again no souring. If it is too warm or you have a heated SH, I would find some cold storage or drain the back pan and fill with water and finish what you have. The longer it sits the worse the quality at warm storage. I know most don't like the sweetening the pan process but like others have said it gives you a great chance to clean up the pans which improves later season quality as well.