overboiling

[dads hobby]

I was wondering what the consiquense could be of boiling beyond the 7 degrees above water could be. I have last years sirop in glass mason jars and have noticed a cloudy residu siting on the bottom of my jars and was wondering if this could be the cause of over boilliongor under filtering?

[WF MASON]

I believe its time for a new felt filter Dad, the sugarsand is getting through your felt, overboiling or thicker syrup will give you crystals in the bottom of your glass jars.

[dads hobby]

I have another question what exactly is niter? Ihave seen it mentioed a few times in deferent areas on the site.

By the way this site is great especialy for someone just starting out i'm geting alot of the question about what i was doing wrong answered.

[mapleman3]

it's kinda like sand on the bottom of your pans, or grit suspended in your syrup.. it's the salts and other stuff that need to be filtered out of your syrup...

[JohnM]

I looked niter or nitre up in the dictionary a little while back....Potassium or Sodium Nitrate The salts left when about all the water is removed from the trees sap.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Here is my opinion of sugar sand and I have seen this hold true every year for years. The higher the bacteria count in the sap, the higher the sugarsand. Always that way for me.

I think a lot of the sugarsand it dead bacteria. A lot of the stuff you filter out as sugarsand it not gritty like sand. It feels that way because sugarsand it mixed it, but closer examination will reveal different. That is always the case for me. I know Kevin and some of the others will blast me for this. I am not a scientist, but have me making syrup for years and am well educated. :idea:

[Maple Hill Sugarhouse]

I figure I'll let them post there thoughts rather there Right or Wrong the readers of the post will have to decifer through the BS even if i know different i'll let them learn things the hard way=It's all part of growing up.

I have noticed that the poorer the condition of the sap the grittier your pan will be coated with the ruffness of sugar sand and cooked bacteria looking and feeling ruffer then 180 grit sand paper at the end of the season in your flue pan if you don't clean it until then.

[ontario guy]

your cloudy does not sound like crystals form being too thick. I have had the cloudy stuff on the bottom ( nitter i would say).

What happened... i took the syrup off a bit early... so in the house i had to actually boil it down a little more before i put it in the bottles... i didn't filter it again... This is wha happened to me.

The cloudy bottom did not appear till the next day when the syrup had time to cool. Sure glad i had glass jars so i could see it, otherwise i would have sold it that way and who ever bought it would have notices cloudy syrup when they emptied out that last bit out of the bottle.

Moral of the story is if you have to boil your syrup after you take it off, put it back through the filter.

Mark

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Even if you don't boil it again, sometimes nitre is fine and it will go through the filters regardless of what you do. :?

[Brent]

From comments made in this thread about bacteria, it would make even more sense to us a UV treatment to kill the bacteria as soon as possible and you would not only get better tasting and color of syrup, but maybe make the filtering process easier ??

does this make sense or is it wishful thinking.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

I don't think the UV will will help the filtering much, but if you are going to hold sap overnight or for an extended period of time, it will help. :)

[maple flats]

I used UV this year and was able to keep it 5 days with no cloudyness to the sap IF the temp was kept below 43 degrees. Last week when the temps got so hot I lost about 350-400 gal because it spoiled, the temp in the bulk tank hit 58 degrees. Next year I plan to have sap ice in a freezer to use for cooling when needed and should be able to help this situation. I am not sure where the critical temp is exactly but must be somewhere from the 43 and the 58. I hope to be able to keep it at 40 or less to be safe. That might take a lot of sap ice to hold it there if the sun shines and the air temp is 79 degrees like we had last Friday. I might also get a greenhouse shade net to make a tent over the tanks to help keep them cooler. Some of these nets are rated to block something like 90% of the sun if I remember right or i could just make an insulated enclosure with venting designed to cool the room thru unique designing of the ventillation , such as a rather high cupola vent and a very low shaded air intake. So much to plan out and only 10 more months to be ready.

[Brent]

now that's good news Mr. Maple Flats.

5 days ! That would let me boil on weekends instead of playing hooky from work for a week. So that means a lot more gallons per hour for weekends only. Oh - oh. This sounds like trouble.

Better start looking for a 6 footer, a holding tank and a UV system.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

Brent,

Just pick you up a milk tank and keep it stocked with 2 or 3 buckets of frozen sap every day and it will keep for many days! :D

[maple flats]

Brandon, I saw your earlier post about sap ice. You use alum sap buckets and freeze sap, do you fill the bucket and do you keep the sap temp cool enough with outside temps near 80? My bulk tank is a milk tank, 415 gal, If it was near full and outside temp was 80 how many sap ices would you suggest? Would they need to be re-iced during the day? This relates to how large of a freezer I would need to hold because it would take a while to deep freeze sap for this so some would always need to be in storage as well as being made new.

[WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER]

A bucket full of sap would freeeze overnight if you had room in the freezer in the house. It will be a long time before you see it 80 degrees and have a tank full of sap. That is abnormal and you can't plan for that and a UV light won't help that much. The only thing is a lot of ice. Most days it won't get out of the 50's if it gets that warm. Freeze a bucket during the night and 1 during the day and keep putting one in it every 12 hours and more if necessary. :)