Cleaning between boils

[Motoman89]

I have a CDL 18x60 hobby evaporator and I want to clean it before my next boil due to the amount of nitter/sugar sand. What do people do with their nearup from the syrup pan? Just winder8ng if people put it back in afterwards? What about the sap from the drop flue pan? Do you try to filter it first, take just the top stuff and rinse out whatever is on the bottom and consider it sacrificial?
Thanks.

[Big_Eddy]

I close the valve between the flue and syrup pan, drain the syrup pan into a pail, then remove and clean it. Reinstall and connect, pour the pail back into the syrup pan and then open the valve.
I clean the flue pan after the season. Never get nitre in my flue pan.

[MISugarDaddy]

I do the same thing as "Big Eddy". The syrup pan is the only pan I clean if it has too much niter buildup. You will lose a little bit of near syrup, but not enough to worry about.
Gary

[SeanD]

If you want to squeeze every drop of sweet out of the pan, drain the front pan into a bucket. I'm able to tilt my pan to get most of it. Set that bucket aside. Add about a gallon of hot water to the pan and use a spatula to swish it around in the leftover sweet (and niter) that are left behind. Let the niter settle out a bit. Drain that sweet into a separate bucket. Now hose out the pan into a waste bucket. Scrub the crap from the foam off the sides, etc. Pour 5-6 gallons of vinegar into the pan. Let it sit overnight or until you prep for your next boil.

Before your next boil, drain the vinegar into a bucket and set it aside. I reuse the same 6 gallons of vinegar all season. Hose out the pan well. It will be sparkling clean (at least up to the level the vinegar was). Use some paper towels to push/sponge out the last of the rinse water from the pan. Put your original bucket of nearup back in the front pan. Carefully, pour off the 1 gallon of rinsed sweet into your back pan, leaving most/all of the niter that settled to the bottom of the bucket. Light the fire.

That one gallon of sweet from the front pan will be as sweet or sweeter than concentrate. I don't sweat any niter that gets back in because I run each pan through the filter press at the end of the night. It flushes the press and it cleans the pans. Win-win.

[maple flats]

I do similar, but definately not the same as SeanD. I close the valve between the flue pan and the syrup pan. Then I drain and squeegy the sweet from the syrup pan into my draw off tank. I then cover that tank (I have a cover for everything that ever has syrup or sweet in.) Then I add 1 gal of white vinegar, no water. I then heat it from underneath using a weed burner torch that I use to start all new fires, it's connected to a main propane fuel line which runs about 2/3 the length of the 24' long sugarhouse. That fuel line is 1" black pipe with several take-offs each with a ball valve. As the vinegar appears to give off steam (but it's barely over 100F) I let it set for 30-60 minutes, I then heat it again and try pulling a nylon spatula across the niter, Much if not all of the niter scales loosen. If any remain. I heat it again. I don't think it ever took more than 3 heatings and most time 2 did it. I then flush the pan into a bucket. As the bucket gets about 2/3 full, I close the valve and dump the bucket. Then I resume. I'm using a potable hose/with nozzle to flush it to and out the draw off valve. Once all niter is out, I competely rinse the pan using permeate. After it's completely rinsed, I open the valve on the draw off tank, which is plumbed to the inlet hose for my filter press. As it's pumped thru the filter press pump, I have the filtering valve closed and a recirculation valve open. I then pump the sweet back into the syrup pan, open the valve from the flue pan , relight the fire and resume boiling. Most often the described proceedure is the next day, but on a few occasions I had to clean the syrup pan mid boil, either way the process was the same. The 1 gal of white vinegar worked well on a 3x3 syrup pan, on my new rig with a 2x2 syrup pan I'll likely use 1/2 gal to clean the pan (4 SF compared to 9 SF). The big difference once I get my new 2x6 converted to oil is that I will be able to do it much sooner since I won't need to wait for a pile of hot coals to burn out.