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Hello all,
I am looking at purchasing either a 5” or a 7” small filter press or one of those stainless steel suction pots that filter through orlon by using a shop vac.
Do any of you have thoughts on that subject? I make 30-40 gallons of syrup per year and am sick of gravity orlon cone filters. Messy and very slow.
Help!
Either a vacuum filter or a press of some sorts would be a big improvement. There is a member on here named Daryl that makes and sells a 5” hand press. If you already have a shop vac available then maybe the vacuum filters make sense. I don’t know much about vacuum filters but others will chime in. Like anything, it’s probably going to be about how much you want to spend.
This is my first season with a new filter press. I've tried many Orlon gravity methods in the past, put they can't come close to a press. It was a big investment, but I'm not looking back. Mine is a short format, manual pump, which is working fine for my syrup quantity. It weighs in at 60 lbs - solid SS construction. And I can add plates and a pneumatic pump when I need to. I've not done a vacuum assist on an Orlon setup, but I watched some videos. Thing is, it's still not as good a filter as a press, and the vacuum may force more particulate matter through the Orlon.
I waited until we were making over 200 gallons a year to buy a press. All gravity through orlon before that. All I can say is, why did I wait so long!? I love my press!!
It's probably more than you want to spend, but a 3-4 frame 7" with an electric diaphragm pump would be my choice.
I could not imagine doing that quantity through Orlon. Your customers must be very loyal.Quote:
Originally Posted by motowbrowne
My hesitation with jumping to a filter press is not understanding how it works into the process of a nightly boil. Right now I gravity filter right off the rig and my filtering is pretty much done when my boil is.
If I understand it, with a press, I would collect all my draws into a bigger tank and reheat that (or not?) at the end of the night. Then I cycle the syrup until it is clear, pack it, then break down and clean the press. That seems like a lot on the end of a night.
I kind of feel the same way about this as I do with bottling during or after a boil. When I'm done boiling there's all the cleanup and it's time to hit the sack. How much extra time does using a press add to a night? Is it really fast?
You can do that. Are you trying to bottle the same night you're cooking? If so, ideally you'd have some type of heated bottling unit. You could filter through the press right off the rig and into the bottling tank where it will maintain the right temp. As you have time, fill bottles.Quote:
Originally Posted by SeanD
Or, you can do what I've been doing for the last four seasons. I bottle on days when I'm not cooking. Forget about filtering off the rig. Just draw off syrup and cool it. I draw into cream cans and pour into buckets for storage until I bottle. When it's time to bottle I reheat as much as I want and run it through the press into my bottling tank (mine isn't heated). My press is big enough that I've only had to break it down once during bottling. We usually do 40-70 gallons at a time when we bottle. Generally when I'm done bottling I suck some sap or distilled water through the press to reclaim the syrup in there, then walk away. The next day I generally break it down and rinse it off.
We only ran our press 4 times this year in the 40 gallons we make. We have 2- 15 gallons stainless pots we put the syrup in as it comes off the evaporator. I’ll check each drawoff and have a pretty good idea if it will be a medium or a dark syrup and will separate the between the 2 pots. We leave it in the pot until the weekend, sometimes maybe a couple weeks before we beat it back up to filter and bottle. We also don’t try and bottle while we are boiling. Too much going on leads to mistakes.
I would choose the press over the vacuum filter. This year I used a vacuum filter for the first time. It worked great for very small batches (under 2 gallons) or syrup that had been previously filtered, but was horrible for regular usage. After about 15 gallons or so, we gave up on it and went back to gravity. With the vacuum, once the filter becomes clogged, you're stuck with whatever syrup is still in the upper chamber. With gravity, you can layer pre-filters and peel them off as they get clogged. There's no way to do that with the vacuum filter. The 3rd time we used the the vacuum, it took 2 hours to filter 6 gallons. We tried with DE, without DE, with pre-filters and without, we finally gave up and will be getting a press for next year. The vacuum filter would probably be great for re-bottling previously, gravity filtered syrup in small batches, into glass containers.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I don't bottle while I boil or even the same day. It's too much to do and often well into the night and I'm tired. I bottle or really hot pack 5 gallon containers on separate days.
I was asking about the time it takes to filter through a press after a night of boiling, but backwoods, you sound like you filter on different days than boiling days. Can the syrup be run through the press cold or do you heat it up?