Hydrometer basics

[eye8astonie]

Thanks tstew. I checked with Farmtek and they said it is not made from food grade material. So I asked whether it could still be used in boiling syrup, he checked into it and said he couldn't find anything out because they are imported....

Found a nice little dial thermometer for now that is doing the trick nicely. Thanks for the help though!!

Duane

[chris]

Just wanted to clarify something about the thermometers - the ones sold by Farmtek are the same as the ones sold by some maple dealers (us included). The stem is food grade, as it is stainless steel, which is the only part that would come into contact with syrup anyway. Maple dealers' prices are considerably higher because they include a 1/4" stainless steel fitting (at least we do) so the thermometers can be screwed into a port on a bottler/evaporator.
Chris

[Pete S]

For what it's worth, we bought a Syrup Hydrometer from the Maple Guys for this year..............oh and thanks for the great service! (ya must'a really slapped that poney on the fanny hard.....wow)

Anyway, last year, our first year, we did the candy thermometer/looks like/tastes like.......and did OK.

This year with the hydrometer, on our first boil, it was like a different world!
When it started to "boil funny", we checked it and saw it was getting close. We closed the draft on the fire, to avoid a boil over, then re-checked.

We actually went just a bit too far but the hydrometer in the cup works sweet, and seemed to eliminate the guess work.

Pete