maple candy yield

[miboss]

I'm a bit confused by the yield I got from my first big (to me) batch of maple candy using my sunrise machine. we did a 3 gallon batch, and got approx 12 lbs of candy. is this normal? I know there is some that came out after cleaning the machine with additional hot syrup, which we will use in the next batch, but the numbers just don't seem correct to me. we took our syrup to 32 above the BP of water, then cooled to 180 before running into machine.

What should a normal yield be per gallon of syrup? i saw a post abusing 1 gallon of syrup should yield 8 lbs of candy, but that seems way off from what we got. I'm asking because we're trying to price the candy correctly.

FWIW the candy turned out great, nice and creamy yet still melt in mouth.

[ToadHill]

You should get 7 pounds per gallon. There is some waste in the machine and some sticks to the sides of the boiling pot and themachines funnel. What is your process? How do you cool? Do you do all of your stirring in the machine? Every step creates some waste.

[miboss]

we cool in the pot we cook it in, once to temp, we scrap pot into machine and keep sides scraped down. once the candy is poured, we heat 1/2 gallon of syrup in the original pot, the run that through machine till tubes are clean, then we save that syrup for next batch. then we heat water in the original pot and run that through machine, we even keep the sweet water to boil the next time if it looks like it has a lot of sweet in it

[ToadHill]

I’m kind of surprised that you can boil to 32 degrees above the boiling point of water and go directly into the machine without setting it up. I’m also surprised if you only cool to 180 and don’t get white spots on your candy?

[miboss]

I’m kind of surprised that you can boil to 32 degrees above the boiling point of water and go directly into the machine without setting it up. I’m also surprised if you only cool to 180 and don’t get white spots on your candy?

Perhaps I'm not understanding fully what you mean by setting it up, we cool it to 180 then scrape into machine. The only time we noticed white spots was when we did a batch using dark syrup and it was only on a few pieces.

I'm open to suggestions on improving. This is all new to me...

[ToadHill]

By setting up I mean it turns to candy in the machine and it stops the pump. Means you have to tear the machine apart to get it out. I’ve had it happen several times.

[miboss]

By setting up I mean it turns to candy in the machine and it stops the pump. Means you have to tear the machine apart to get it out. I’ve had it happen several times.

we have made two batches, it hasn't set up in the machine yet. The sunrise machine has a water jacket that I keep between 160 and 170 so I guess that helps things from setting up when making candy.

[ToadHill]

We have the same machine. We still manage to set it up periodically.