We filter right off the evaporator into a felt filter that is lined with two polyester prefilters. Use the sailor hat method to increase filter area. We tie the filter to rim of 5 gal bucket and have a hole in bottom that drains to a holding container. Did not purchase the wire rack for sailor hat as was not needed. One of our felt filters is so stiff that it can hold the weight of the syrup without the rack support. The other not so stiff so we support the middle with a piece of copper pipe.
We mainly run evap from about 8am until 3pm.
For first half of season, no issue with syrup going through filter by the end of the day. Even later season, with more nitre, we just pull prefilter 1 a little earlier. Sometimes there might be maybe 300ml syrup that does not go through and in that case we just take out the sailor hat and let syrup hit the freshly exposed filter surface.
We do lose some in the filter but dont think it warrants the effort of rinsing the filter with hot sap and returning to evaporator.
Our total cleanup at end of day is maybe 15 minutes.
2023 - 130 taps, 90L from 4,000L as of mid March
2021 - 84 taps, 50L from 2100L
2020 - 100 taps on buckets, 21L syrup from 2700L so far (FEB 26-Mar 13) and then the pandemic hit! End of our season!
2019 - 62 taps on buckets, 95L syrop from 3215L sap
2018 - 62 taps, collecting by hand, 90L syrop from 3200L sap
2017 - Lapierre Waterloo Small mini pro with 40 taps
2014 - 2016 40 taps making one or two batches on a 2x6 flat pan over an open arch as it would have been done in 1900