Enough nitre already

[3rdgen.maple]

Man what is up with all the nitre this year. I am tired of rotating and cleaning pans. I can get five drawoffs before I have to clean. I tried rotating the pan a couple of times without any success in diluting the nitre. If I try to get a third drawoff when the thermometer hits seven the same thing happens everytime. Start at seven cannot drawoff fast enough and the next thing I know it is at 15 then the worst I smell burnt syrup. This has happened twice. Well Lucky for me it is about a dime to a quarter size of burnt nitre in the pan without any further damage. So after doing that twice I shut down every five drawoffs (5 hours) to do a cleanup. What a pain. Has anybody else seen this this year and if so what are you doing to deal with this problem?

[KenWP]

I just finished doing a batch of syrup and it has so much crap in it I can't stand the taste of it. I can't even get it to run through the filters hot. I have to work on it more tomorrow. Yuck

[halfast tapper]

We are having to reverse flow every 40 gallons. Earlier in the week we cleaned front pan got all nitre off and started fresh.

[maple flats]

I have had to clean every 6 hrs. Tried reversing at 3 hrs with no improvement. Have not had a problem with burning, my niter is a light golden brown but it sure changes to bubbles in the front pan. Worst year for niter I ever had (7 yrs)

[cheesegenie]

Niter is bad here too, funny, must be "one of those years" things all over. I
noticed it on the first batch, first time I saw it looks like white clay.

[PerryW]

I have not noticed the nitre being any worse than normal here in NH.

I reverse the flow with every boil (about every 5-10 gallons of syrup) and do not plan on cleaning my pans unless it looks like I will exceed 120 gallons for the season.

If your dial is reading 15 then your syrup is way to thick to draw off properly. If I see my dial thermometer start climbing more than 2-3 degrees above syrup, I will immediately STOP DRAWING OFF. Then I grab a dipper (or two) of hot sap (from the back pan) and pour it in the syrup pan near the draw off. This will bring the density back down to syrup and eliminate the scorching of the front pan. Then you can start drawing off again.

[oneoldsap]

Sounds more liks sugar sand than nitre !!

[Dill]

I just cleaned my filters and there is mud in my sink. Nasty nasty niter.

[mapleman3]

More sugar sand/niter than sugar % this year it seams... I did a cleaning with acid last night it was so bad.

the night before I had the same thing, couldn't draw off fast enough when it hit 7, then all hell breaks loose... up to 15+ and the smell of burning syrup... I know exactly how you feel.

all is well and drew off fine today :)

[3rdgen.maple]

Lobsatfari I don'tt hink your confused at all. Sugar sand and nitre is the same unless I'm confused too. I boiled today also and had no further problems with the drawoff. I have never seen where you start to drawoff at 7 and it hits 15 in seconds until this year. It got so thick It hardly flows out of the valve. And of course I was diluting it as fast as I could and thinned to syrup on the finisher. Funny thing is it had a slight burnt taste before I filtered it and after the filtering I could'nt taste the burnt. I thankfully lack experience in the burning catagory buck I put in the drum for commercial anyways. Hope to never have that problem again and cannot wait to get a good boil without so much nitre.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I can cure your 7 to 15 problem in about 2 seconds.......run the evaporator about 2 inches deep. I can't see hardly any difference in boil rate between 1 and 2 inches and I cured these problems a couple of years ago. Syrup drawoffs are way more consistent and no spikes in temps. I ran it down to 3/4" or less the other day when I was chasing out the flue pan after running it aprox 2" all season and it went from 7 to 15 twice in the blink of an eye and I didn't have nitre buildup to cause it.

Almost 75% of crop this year was light syrup and only 5 gallons of B grade which had an A flavor running it 2" deep and I don't think there are too many fire boxes hotter than mine right under the reverse flow syrup pan.

[TapME]

All my draws have started on the red line and gone up from there on the hydrometer. I run my pans at 1 1/2'' all the time. I just run past the level to thin the syrup to the right density.