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WF MASON
03-26-2005, 03:29 AM
A friend here the other day , he cooks on a GH Grimm 2'x8' - 2' syrup pan,as everyone else he's always looking for a way to inprove the quality of his syrup,
he contends that after he stops firing the evaporator to shut down , and has taken off syrup from the last compartment in the pan , he floods the pans some , he says as the evaporation takes place from the cooling overnite , the syrup in the center channels in the pan are very close to syrup the next day when its time to boil again. You get the evaporator boiling and the last compartment still reads low on your hydrometer, if you check the center compartments , it way past syrup and is making dark syrup in the hard boil.
He has started draining the front pan after the fire goes out , flooding the front pan from the flue pan and finishing the contents of the front pan in the finisher right away. He says the grade of syrup has been much better since he been doing this.

sweetwoodmaple
03-26-2005, 06:22 AM
Probably makes sense considering the longer the syrup stays hot at almost syrup density, the darker it will be. Essentially stack burn, only in the evaporator.

I would think this would be more pronounced in a wood evaporator since the heat lingers.

What I have done on occastion is plug off the front pan and then add some fresh sap to take the density down a little to keep it from staying at almost syrup while the evaporator cools down.

Sounds like his method is better, but I'm usually finishing up at 1am and want to get to bed so I can go to my real job the next morning!

Brian

gmcooper
03-26-2005, 10:00 PM
Bill, From past ex. sounds like he needs to rake over the coals he has when he shuts down for the night. I always plug the syrup pan from the flue when I am done for the night. But you do have to flood enough to the syrup pan and if you don't spread out coals you will get a hot spot above that will boils much longer and can even burn on there if fire is to hot. A friend of ours had little to much heat and not enough sap. Burned a hole thru his syrup pan. Don't know why he didn't lose the the whole sugarhouse.
Mark

WESTVIRGINIAMAPLER
03-27-2005, 05:13 PM
If you have a blower on the arch or an inferno type arch as I have, let the blower run a few minutes extra and the coals are all but gone! :D