What do I need to heat syrup for bottling? Finisher? thanks

[motowbrowne]

My Advice is to finish the syrup on your rig, and filter it right away and them package in bulk, weather it be 5 gallon containers or 15 or 40, any unnecessary time spent reheating cold near up or syrup to filter is miserable in my opinion. Once you get rid of all those steps you will be amazed how much more time you have. Get some kind of a water jacketed Canner to heat your syrup up in when you want to package it in retail containers.

I think this is probably the direction I should go.

Can anyone using a water jacket canner with a 220 volt element share their experience in how long it takes to heat syrup? The one I got a quote on is a 27 gallon.

[motowbrowne]

Also, is there a reasonably priced container option for bulk storage? I'm not super keen on hot packing plastic. I imagine stainless barrels are the best, but I would imagine they're not particularly cheap.

[Mead Maple]

I always take mine off a little heavy, it does not make any sense to me to take it off early and finish it on something that is way more inefficient and time consuming. When I have enough to filter I reheat on a turkey fryer, adjust density and run it through my press into the bottler.

If you have a water jacketed bottler or system that will not make more niter you could take off a little over density, heat and filter into a larger container. When you want to bottle just but it into your bottler and heat to around 185 and bottle. There is no need to filter it again if you are not creating more niter.

I take mine off heavy as well after watching a smoky lake video. This allows me to draw off some sweet from the pan in a separate container hot and filtered. I then use that (sweet) but lower sugar material to dilute and bring the brix down to the appropriate degree. This also adds to my syrup total for that session and it’s filtered just like the syrup I drew off.

I used to use my turkey burner to reheat/finish/bottle but now I use my homemade filter/bottler on my wood stove and heat to temp and proper density.

Its based off a leader/mason canner but is made of thick stainless so it heats up so much more evenly and doesn’t create niter


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[maple flats]

Whether it creates more niter is dependent on whether in the heating process you evaporated more moisture away or had an unusually hot spot while heating. The hot spot causes it faster, but if you loose much more water there are then minerals that settle because the syrup went past saturation.

[Wolfcreek Maple]

We have a LaPierre 29 gallon water jacket canner with dual elements it
takes about 2 hours to heat up syrup to 186 ,if its full.

[motowbrowne]

We have a LaPierre 29 gallon water jacket canner with dual elements it
takes about 2 hours to heat up syrup to 186 ,if its full.

Thank you, that's very helpful.

[motowbrowne]

Just spoke to Jim at CDL Wisconsin. He was of the opinion that I shouldn't use a water jacketed canner for reheating. Said it was only designed for maintaining temp. Even the dual element 220volt model. Kinda confusing.

[maple flats]

While I never timed how long it takes for my 16 gal WJ Smoky Lake WJ bottler to heat, it helped a lot after I made a cover for holding the heat in the bottler. I made it using 1" rigid foam insulation. The heating element controller remains outside of the enclosure but the rest is all covered, top, sides and front including the part out front over the bottling shelf. It makes the heating process much faster (and more efficient). To assemble it I used 2.5" long screws. I just cut the pieces and screwed the corners together. The top in laid on after and weighted down using a length of 2x6, the front bottom cover is propped up from the bottling shelf.

[Wolfcreek Maple]

Yes seems confusing we use ours all time for reheating.We have used ours for 4 years now no issues at all.It uses same elements as a hot water "heater".

[motowbrowne]

Talked to another dealer who said I was barking up the wrong tree. Suggested I'd need to heat elsewhere, then filter into the canner and that the canner wouldn't heat syrup. She did admit that they'd never tried though.

Dave, I was thinking that insulation would help, even just wrapping it in towels.