Uv Lights?

[the old guy]

How Many Of You Use A Uv Light On Your Maple Sap? We Are Far South And Often Our Sap Runs Exceed 600 Gallons And The Weather Temps Fluctuate Between 20's And 60's. Since We Can Only Boil About 40gph On A Good Day, About The Third Day Of Boiling Our Finished Syrup Turns Dark. Ideas??? Curious About Uv Lights.

The Old Guy

[220 maple]

UV Lights
I don't have one yet but hope to have one some day. There is a large producer in Somerset County, Pa. that purchased the bulbs and made his own units using 4'' PVC pipe. Bulb is positioned in the middle of the pipe and the sap passes around it. Just a couple years ago he told me he did not have much over 100 dollars in his UV light. It works just as good a factory model. He also hangs UV bulbs in his storage tanks that feeds his evaporator, even though the light can only penetrate about 2 inches of sap, it still helped to keep his tanks clean. Somewhere I have a picture of his homemade UV Light unit. I'll see if I can scan it and post it for those willing to try to make their own unit. FYI UV light can blind you be careful Please

Mark 220 Maple

[ziggy]

I purchased a UV light at the beginning of last season. You can pump 8gpm thru it, about $1200. I only have one real experiance with it as most of the season my sap never had a chance to sit around. The experiance I do have is this. Had a sap run of about 1600 gallons on Monday, sap came in and went thru the UV light. I then recirculated the sap back thru the UV once a day. Boiled it on Saturday and made bottom of the grade medium. When I boiled the previous Saturday before the Sap run I had made middle of the grade Medium. So I do not feel I lost any color by holding the sap for a week.

[KenWP]

How Many Of You Use A Uv Light On Your Maple Sap? We Are Far South And Often Our Sap Runs Exceed 600 Gallons And The Weather Temps Fluctuate Between 20's And 60's. Since We Can Only Boil About 40gph On A Good Day, About The Third Day Of Boiling Our Finished Syrup Turns Dark. Ideas??? Curious About Uv Lights.

The Old Guy
Really dumb guestion but at 40 gph why does it take 3 days to boil off the sap as thats only 15 hours of boiling. Thats only a easy one day boil for me.

[Brent]

when I first start this nonsense about 5 years back I was real proud that we got nothing but extra light. Did that for 4 years. Then this year it was different. Got some medium. We have been thinking about a UV for 2 years and never pulled the trigger.

So this year the wife says she's going to do a table at the "buy local - farmer's market" and puts out some tiny sampling cups.

To make the story short, I don't ever want to see extra light again.

Now tell me, how do you make medium and dark from the git-go

[3rdgen.maple]

Brent, longer boils older or sap is the easiest way. You can slow your boil down giving it more time in the evaporator. Kinda like running old flat pans it was hard to get any light syrup but once in awhile it was possible.

[KenWP]

My syrup is dark and darker and I just got my first order for a gallon. The lady loved the 500ml bottle I sold here last week and wants more. She tells me she uses 4 to 5 gallons a year of it. I do plan to make lighter syrup then the stuff I have made. But it will still be darker then the store bought.
I seen a silver gizmo for treating water the other day at a garage sale I almost asked what it was worth so i could figure a way to run sap through it. But I have enough problems right now.

[dschultz]

When people see light syrup they think it isn't cooked enough there used to seeing dark syrup.Light syrup is good for making candy and cream.
If you do get light syrup wait till mid to late season syrup and blend the 2 together.That will make your light turn to medium or dark.

[vermaple]

A few years ago when I was set up at an event selling syrup and giving away samples, a lady informed me in no uncertain terms that Fancy syrup did not have any flavor and she only bought dark amber or grade B if she could get it. I asked her if she had ever had any good flavored Fancy and she told me that she thought so. At this time I poured her a sample of Fancy and asked her to try this. Her eyes lit up and she said I'll take two gallons of this. Its all in the flavor!

[Maplewalnut]

I agree its all about taste. Probably not as much in New England area but down this far south, it is a conditioning thing. People are used to dark syrup and anything lighter than mud is suspect of being something other than syrup. I purposely made B syrup the whole second half of my season because thats what people want. Give a taste test without them seeing the color-I'll put a good tasteing B grade against light amber anyday. Now I am not talking 'mersh' but a full of flavor over cooked B is where its at.

Royalmaple will probably fall off his chair laughing again but I am leading the charge for more B syrup! It's an untapped market, pun intended!

Mike

[Brent]

It's all in the flavor ... and that comes from ???

I stopped by a roadside maple lot while the guy was boiling a couple seasons back and got chatting with him. Proud of his stuff he scooped out a bit for me to try. Wow I said, this is fantastic.

"Yup, he said, to bad I can't make much like this. Only got few hundred trees here. Back on my farm I've got several thousand. They never make the same syrup I get here. Think it must be the minerals in the soil"