Plugged filter

[Brent]

This year we got a D&G cone filter tank, the kind that is about 30" tall and 8" diameter with a ring to hold the wool filter.

We parked it beside the evaporator with a good supply of the paper filter (looks like house wrap Tyvex/Typar )

As the syrup came off the evaporator we poured it through the paper filters, lifting them out when the got plugged. No surprise there.

But after we had gone through something just over 10 gallons, the wool filter stopped passing syrup. No nitre sand in the wool, just darkened up with the syrup and nothing would go through.

We presoaked the wool and also tried it dry, same result.
Every time we had to put in a cleaned wool we lost a lot of syrup.

Is this normal?
Are the orlon or other fabrics any better ?

[Haynes Forest Products]

**************************Filter press************************

[Brent]

Haynes we have a micro-filter that we use just before going into the water jacket.
see the picture down this page.
http://www.duffyslanemaple.ca/Making-syrup/making-syrup.html This does a great job.
With the the cone filter we wanted to get rid of most of the sand before dumping into hot pack pails.

[Russell Lampron]

That sounds about right as far as normal goes. I used to use the Orlon flat filters and they would last longer but would still clog up.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Good looking operation. I stand corrected looks like you have it coverd. How do you like the filtering unit that I see in the pictures. I'm a little disapointed to see that your using a warped board to level the evap. Can we get a stright one by next year:rolleyes:

[Brent]

The micro filter is the same thing my equipment dealer uses for his 3500 tap operation. It does a fabulous job.
As good as or better than the traditional filter press I had. The effectiveness depends a lot on the quality of the filter bags you put in it. Only thing I don't like so much is the bag filters, that like the wool filter in cone rig, hold a lot of syrup and trying to recover that is a challenge.

The photo of the levelling shows what happens when you move into a house that was previously owned by a professional excavator, who did not know what level mean,. and built his own pool cabana, that we converted to sugar shack. The wife has been challenging me to cut out the floor with a chain saw and pour a concrete floor. I'm afrain if I cut it the whole mess will fall down.
The beam is primarily to distribute the weight because I have doubts about the floor taking the weight.
In my day job we level machines to less than a thou per foot. Levelling the evap and loading it gives new meaning to puck power.

[KenWP]

Cone filters are supposed to plug. If they never they would not be much use. I had to change my prefilters today. I poured off a batch of syrup and after it went through there was no niter in the first prefilter. Or the other 4 either. It was all packed up against the orlon filter. So I put in new prefilters and they caught the niter again.

[Brent]

But there was no nitre - none - in the wool filter. Took them to the kitchen to rinse them and there was no residue in the sink. They seemed to get full of thickened syrup and quit.

From the comments asbove that this is normal, I'm going to make a strainer / basket and just use the paper pre-filters next year.

[maplecrest]

i do not think what you had for filtering yesterday. it was soo hot that i gave up trying to filter. could not get 5 gallons thru my press. with 4 cups of aid. was not going thru.

[argohauler]

Never used wool starainers and I don't use pre filters anymore. I have a homemade strainer that I put an orlon filter in. If the syrup runs are big, I can get 20+ litres through a filter with no sediment, but I don't get sugar sand to plug it up either. Boiled the last 2 days and no problems with syrup going through.

[Brent]

Argohauler you're living a charmed life. How the ____ do you manage that ? What kind of strainer is it ? (or should I be asking your patent attourney?)

[maple flats]

Argohauler, do you pack in glass? If yes, is the syrup clear after setting a while? This sounds unusual if both answers are yes.

[argohauler]

Brent it's not the strainer, it's the filter. My uncle sold a river lot off. The people that summered there had this stainless cylinder tank, probably 20 gallon with a coffee urn spout on it. They used it for water. The people threw it out for garbage, so my uncle scooped it up. I was telling him about how my single small brothers 8 gallon strainer with the pinch collar and how it was a pain and kind of on the small side. He told me I got the thing just for ya. ( Anybody want to buy a lead soldered strainer?)

So we headed to Glanford Iron. We picked up some stainless rod and bar. my uncle drilled some holes around to top of the strainer and he put in some pop rivets. Then he took part of the bar and made it fit the circumference of the tank and braised it together. Then he took the remainder of the bar and made it to length to go across the circle. He then cut the the rod into 8- 2" pieces and pointed the ends. He next braised 4 of those pieces at an angle to the centre bar. 2 on either side, opposite each other. Next he braised the centre bar to the circle. Then he brasied the other 4 pieces onto the circle opposite the ones on the centre bar. This makes it into a double strainer and the loops of the orlon filters fit over those pegs. The whole holding unit sits on top of the pop rivets.

It was cheap and works really well. It sits on top of a wood legged chair minus the back. ( Used to be the chair of an old timer neighbour that used to use it to boil syrup) It sits on the chair backwards to the way you would sit, so it sits at an angle to drain better because the tank is flat bottomed.

You have to treat your orlon well. Don't wring it out or try to force syrup through it. I always have the filters pre wetted.

My uncle used wool way back in the day. He also used to raise sheep. He said when you would wash the filters out, they would smell like sheep!

Now I did forget to mention that on a very rare occaision, I have canned syrup into bottles and thought it looked fine. Then it sat a while before it was sold and something, I don't know what, precipitated out of it and would hang there or settle to the bottom. I use a coffee urn to can bottles, so is the heating of the syup in that making it come, or was it there when I poured it out of the jug?

The neighbour who is buying and selling Mennonite syrup had me look at his syrup yesterday at market. It was a half litre of medium. I held it into the light and I saw this precipitae in the bottle and I told him I've had it before, but rarely, it looked fine when bottled (he bottled it himself) and it was so fine, it went right through the filters.

I'm knocking on wood for continued good luck in filtering!

[Brent]

Sounds like you've got it working pretty good for you. From what I've learned, if you reheat syrup to 195 and over, it starts to form the percipitate again.

Even if you put a thermometer in it to watch that the temp does not get that high, it will of course be much hotter on the bottom where it sits over the electric or gas flame.

The only way to can hot and totally avoid the percipitate, is to us a water jacket canner where the element is in the water and the water never gets above 190. We have a great high pressure filter that works as well as the filter presses. We pass the syrup through the filter and into the water jacket canner.

I think this is why the Quebecois put out so much syrup for so many years in cans and nothing but cans. Nobody could see the percipitate. Just my thoughts though.

[markct]

Haynes we have a micro-filter that we use just before going into the water jacket.
see the picture down this page.
http://www.duffyslanemaple.ca/Making-syrup/making-syrup.html This does a great job.
With the the cone filter we wanted to get rid of most of the sand before dumping into hot pack pails.

where can you get one of those filters, is it special for maple or adapted from something else? i have never seen one before have a brand or anything?

[Brent]

The filter is made by EcoChem International in Waterloo Quebec. Phone 450-539-4840

see the bottom of this page
http://www.ecochem.ca/products/mf-uf.htm

I have no idea what they sell for new. I bought mine used after seeing the one in operation at Uncle Richrards. He uses his as pre-filter pumping directly through it off his 4'x12' maxi-flu rig. He uses it with finer filter bags as a final filter off his finishing rig. You can learn a bit about bag filters on the McMaster Carr web site. Last year I got 1 micron absolute filters from them and the syrup look like I was looking through stained glass. They were overkill and plugged up pretty fast. This year we are about to get cranked up into bottling and will try some 1 micron standard and 5 micron filters.

[Brent]

curious footnote

Google found the filing of a law suit in the Federal Courts by LaPierre against EcoChem.

If you brouse the EcoChem site you will see some RO machines that look "somewhat" similar to the LaPierre/Airablo machines.

[PerryW]

The only way to can hot and totally avoid the percipitate, is to us a water jacket canner where the element is in the water and the water never gets above 190.

One other way is to filter it again with a standard syrup filter before going into the jugs to remove any precipitate that may have developed. I'm sure I lose a little syrup in the filter but personally, I am more concerned with mold developing in the jugs, so I heat to 198, filter into an insulated canner (with a dial thermometer) and stop filling the jugs when the temp drops below 185.

[Brent]

Perry
I don't fully understand the physics/chemistry but I "think" that any syrup that is over 190 is likely to make the nitre. So even if it passes through a filter at say 194, it could still make nitre in the bottle. I think we did this to ourselves a few years ago. Preheated the cast iron filter press, heated up the syrup, got absolutely clear stuff as it went into the bottles, but could see clouds the next morning. I think you can filter too hot.

To walk the fine line between nitre and mould we preheat all our glass ( which also reduces breakage do to thermal shock ), filter and then heat to 185-190 with the water jacket.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Im with you both on the niter or sedement clouds in the bottles after some time. I will be trying to stay closer to 180-185. I was under the inpression that it had to boil but now I think its more about temp.

[Brent]

Yup I thought it was the boil to, but other folks on here said there was a threshold near 190 - 195. Seems to have helped us. The other thing we did was after 3 minutes with the bottles laying down to heat the caps, we had them all on a wagon and moved them outside to cool ASAP.

Jeeeshh, things sure have gone a long way from a gallon of sap on the kitchen stove.

[Haynes Forest Products]

Brent That horse reminds me of the old VW micro buses that we cut 4ft out of:lol: