Steel for a Sap Pan--Bad Idea?

[stieler]

I run a steel pan on my drum evaporator. Cleaned it good when I first built it, boiled some water off, then immediately did some sap to syrup. I read here not to clean pans before you put them away for summer. The natural sugars of the syrup protect from rust. Just put them in storage and give them a light clean when you get them out next year. Soot on bottom keeps the outside from becoming all rusty. I flip the pan upside down and it's stays outside on the evaporator until next boil. Always great tasting syrup. On my 4th year with the same pan.

[BCPP]

We have a steel pan of about those dimensions that we use over a steel grate on a fire to demonstrate syrup production in Victorian times. It has no dividers. Most of the time it's just boiling for demo purposes but in past years I have made a batch or two per season. It's just a batch process, fill it with about 60l sap at 9 and then pour off 1.5l syrup at 3! Getting the syrup out of a 100lb hot steel pan is quite challenging!

We never do anything to clean the pan other than wash with water and store inside. Rust has not been an issue.

This year we added a mini pro evaporator to our demonstrations and I have to say it's a lot easier to open a valve every so often to draw off the syrup but cleaning the ss divided pans takes a lot more effort!