Bottling .... an adventure

[berkshires]

Okay a couple of quick thoughts:

1 - You might get more hits on this topic if you posted it in the "bottling" forum rather than the "Massachusetts" forum.

2 - Sounds like your volume is at least 50% more than mine, so my methods might need some tweaking to fit you, but I bet they wouldn't be too far off.
- Draw off the evaporator at roughly 219
- Allow most niter to settle by leaving in the fridge for a few days
- Pour the good stuff into your finishing pot, and save all the dregs (we'll get to those later)
- Bring the good stuff to a boil, correct it to 67 brix, and pour through pre-filters and filter using "sailors hat" method into a coffee urn.
- Bottle out of the coffee urn
- Take the dregs, combine them and add water. Leave these in the fridge until the niter settles out again. Pour the good stuff into a new container and dump the dregs. This good stuff will be way under syrup, but it lets you recover most of the sugar (which you can add to the next batch)
- Take the felt filter when you're done bottling, put it in the freezer, and next time you're boiling, run your fresh sap through it. This will get sometimes nearly a cup of syrup back into your evaporator that would otherwise go down the drain. Then clean your filter well before the next batch.

Cheers,

GO