Oil versus propane finisher

[Robert K]

I am going to throw the question out. What are the pros and cons of finishing in a separate pan with oil or propane. I myself was taught to finish off the evaporator and that’s how I do it, but old dogs can learn new tricks sometimes so I am pondering. Any thoughts appreciated, thanks

[maple flats]

While I finish on the evaporator, my draw off tank gets pumped to a 2x6 finisher, to verify density and to get it back to a good temperature for filtering. Real large operations can filter right from the draw off tank because they draw syrup so fast, I only draw 6-7 gal/hr, and I filter and pack 30+ gal batches at a time.

[Robert K]

Thanks Dave, I am just trying to wrap my head around the benefits , and now that you say that I guess it would take some pressure off when everything is going on. If you had a choice which would you use propane or oil ? I have neither at the moment and am pondering improvements. Thanks Robert

[maple flats]

My thought is that propane will be far quieter in use, all I hear (I used it today as I bottled from another barrel of last year's syrup) all I heard was the slight sound under the pan directly above the tube burners. My 2x6 has 4 tube burners, but I almost always only use the center 2, works good for me. Today as usual I only heated the syrup to about 185-190, then sent it thru the filter press and to the bottler.
When I'm running new, syrup to filter it for the first time, I heat it to 205-210, but when re-filtering what was in a barrel I only heat it to 1`85-190F.