filter while boiling ??

[Brent]

Has anyone had any success trying to filter their flue pans of syrup pans while boiling. It seems to me if you could, it would reduce the nitre that was available to stick to the pans that is so hard to clean.

A second crazy idea ... what would happen if you ran the sap through a water softener before boiling. Would the calcium in the nitre be easier to clean. It should remain as a soluable calcium salt/ion. It should go back into solution in washing shouldn't it ??? I guess the big question is what it might do to the flavor.

[mountainvan]

Niter does'nt really form until the syrup is almost syrup, so filtering the sap in the flue pan would'nt do much. Running sap through a water softener would make for salty syrup, I would think. If you want very little niter get an ro. I've made 280 gallons and took my front pan off once, it had freckles of niter, that's it.

[Brent]

There would be no salt (sodium chloride) We have a softener in the house and there is virtually no salt transfered. It is flushed clear in the cycle.

Last year we had nitre so bad the pan was coated after 4 hours. Had to shut down and clean to avoid scorching.

Pretty tough to justify a real RO for 300 taps. I will be trying a new approach to using the Merlin RO which I did last year with mixed results.