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Heating 29 gallons is going to take a long time no doubt. But if you just put 5 or 10 at a time in there it should be fine. I fill mostly 5 gallon hot packed pails, I do have a 15 gallon stainless barrel also. When I want to pack syrup I use my propane bottler with steam pan, it heats 5 gallons in about a half hour with 50° syrup, might take 45 or more if your syrup is 25°.
If I fill it full it takes much longer, also of note once you get it up to temperature it heats the next batch up much faster.
I have all intentions of replacing my Small canner with a water Jacketed electric one, even if it takes 2 hours to heat 25 gallons I can plan for it and you dont have to worry about it going over temp like you do with propane so in theory you could start heating and go do something else for awhile.
Besides canning up 25 gallons would be a once a month thing on average.
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Ryan,
Your operation is approximately the same size as ours, 180 gallons of syrup.
I take off syrup a little heavy from the evaporator and adjust the density if needed after draw off prior to filtering still staying a little on the heavy side. I temporarily store the bulk syrup in 2.5 gallon containers. In the freezer for long term.
In the canner which is 10 gallons and propane fired. I only bring the syrup to 185 F ish. I check the density again and adjust (thin) as needed. I do a final filter with just several layers of cheese cloth on the fill port.
Time to come up to temp depends on ambient temp maybe 1 hour ish.
Regards,
Chris
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That's what I do, fill the canner, fill the water jacket and cover it with my insulation cover. With that running I do other things that always need doing and I check back once in a while until the temperature is at 185-187. I then verify density, draw a grade sample bottle and start bottling. During bottling the cover is off.
