cleaning evaporato

[old tom]

What if I poured a gal or 2 of vinegar and filled the evaporator with water and fired it up. Would that help clean it?

[bmbmkr]

Yes. And at the end of the season you can leave your last sweet or even sap in the pans for a few weeks, it will turn to vinegar and soak into the niter and leave your pans sparkling like new with very little scrubbing. There are dozens of posts on here about that, some including myself leave the pans soaking in maple vinegar for a month or two after the season.

[buckeye gold]

I do like bmbmkr and do the sap soak, If you catch it before it molds or get's too funky you can filter off some of the Maple Vinegar for salad dressings and cooking. You'll need to pasteurize it though. I just heat it to 180 for a few minutes to stabilize it. If it goes too far the mother consumes the whole pan and then spoils. Doesn't make any difference for cleaning but ruins vinegar. I also made vinegar independent of the evaporator....actually works better for vingegar. I save some mother in the fridge from each year.

[old tom]

Thank you both for the reply.

[Jeff E]

Wow....when I tried that pan cleaning method, nothing I saw in the evaporator made me think 'I'll put that on my salad'

I use chemicals now, like vinegar or milk stone remover acid, or pan cleaner from a Maple dealer. Less mold in the sugar house is better for me. Also I don't have the waiting time.
Heat is the key to get the niter loosened up.

[ennismaple]

We generally leave the fermented sap in the pans until it makes you gag when you come through the front door of the camp. I've never once been tempted to eat it! I've seen the contents get so ropey that it would barely drain out a 1" pipe. It kills a large patch of grass on the hill beside the camp where we've drained the contents.

We drained and washed our pans last weekend after letting them sit for 7 weeks. We had more tartar than ever on the flues and they came clean with a little pressure washer time. The syrup pan is sparkling!

[maple flats]

I think your first idea would dilute the vinegar too much. Cutting the vinegar with too much water is not a good idea. I use straight vinegar, but many get good results adding 1 or 2, maybe 3 gal water and get good results. Reducing the strength more than that I'd think would dilute it too much.

[buckeye gold]

It's just fermented sap and then vinegar. Ever drink any wine, whiskey or beer....similar process. Sure it will mold if left long enough and even spoil, but so will any fermented food. I will continue to do it and be unapologetic. Besides the pan gets washed with a chlorine solution and boiled then flushed before any syrup is made. I have shown and discussed my cleaning method with many customers and they think it's neat someone figured it out. Most accept it as a natural organic process. Believe me I spent a whole career dealing with the FDA and even held and operated INAD (investigative new animal drug) permits for drug approval. This is so far off the FDA's radar they would barely blink at it.

[tcross]

so, make vinegar in your pans to clean with, or buy it? not sure the issue. no one is around my sugar house when it's time to clean up for the year regardless.

[jrgagne99]

I just think it's a bad look when I hear and read this sort of thing going on in our industry. For example, industry publications describing how disgusting the stuff in the pan looks and smells after letting the sweet sit all summer long. Or suggestions to leave the fermented sap in the pans until it makes you queazy to even smell it. If restaurants ever made public statements like these about how they clean their kitchens, their business would surely suffer. I think we should be a cautious about this sort of stuff, especially in today's climate.

If the general public gets the perception that this is how most sugarmakers generally do things, it is an open invite to more FDA regulation and oversight, and I think that is something most sugarmakers do not want to see.