Bad mistake and close call

[johnpjackson]

Last night I really screwed up. I'd been boiling on my home made evaporator since 7:30am. I had ~120 gallons of sap to do. I kept at it non-stop. Around 3am or so I was almost done and figured I had about 3 gallons of almost syrup in the pan. It had gotten down to about 14 degrees outside by then and I'd been going in the house in between adding buckets of sap to the evaporator about every 20 minutes or so. The evaporator is inside a little room in the attached shed between our house and barn. It's fired by the biggest turkey fryer style propane burner I could find. It's enclosed by cement blocks that my pan sits on top of.

Anyway, despite my promises to myself to be vigilant, I ended up falling asleep in the house for about a half an hour or so. When I woke up I panicked because I knew I had been asleep and longer than was going to be survivable. When I opened the door into the shed area I smelled the burned sugar. My heart sank and it hasn't really recovered yet. The first thing is, I am so lucky I didn't sleep longer. I can't see how the contents of the pan wouldn't have caught on fire soon enough. What I found was that the syrup had boiled over the side of the pan and onto the floor, more than a gallon of it. It reminded me of the Elephant's Foot of nuclear fuel molten glass in the basement of the Chernobyl reactor building. What was still in the pan had begun to turn into a black, carbonizing disaster. I immediately shut off the propane burner and then dumped a couple of gallons of freezing cold sap into the pan to get it cooled down. After that I did a little basic cleanup but left the mess for this morning to face. After that whole day of boiling, and all the work my family and me had put into getting those first 120 gallons of sap collected, all I wanted to do was just go to sleep and get away from the shock for a while.

Today I dealt with the ruins in my evaporator pan. The pan is (was) a beautiful piece of work I got for a few hundred dollars from a guy in Michigan who makes them. 21" x 24", divided into 3 troughs, with bulkhead fittings for a draw off valve and thermometer. Plus, a little warming pan that sits on top of one end of the troughs. I used to be worried about doing anything potentially rough on the pan as far as cleaning it, based on how careful it looks like people in videos online and here in places like this sound about it. I had to give up that ethos. The burnt on, carbonized sugar in most of the inside of the pan was indescribably bonded to the stainless steel. I spent 5 hours getting it all removed. After getting the initial sugar goo off everything, I eventually decided there was no way I was going to get the carbon off without scratching the metal. I settled on a razor blade scraper and tried to minimize the scratches and gouges with it. After I got through it all, down to every little bit everywhere, I used an industrial scotch brite type of abrasive pad to sand/clean the whole interior surface. That smoothed out the discernable feeling scratches and gouges, and it took off the bluing that the overheating had caused to surface metal.

The lasting effect of the overheating though was that it warped the bottom of the pan pretty badly. It's pretty wavy looking now but it is still just as solid as ever and will hold and boil sap, I'm sure. Other than looking shabby and abused for that, is there anything about the pan being warped, or having needed to be scraped out so extensively, that will negatively impact my syrup making with it now?

[Sugarmaker]

Let me the first to congratulate you! You are now officially a sugarmaker!
You may notice my handle, and yes i was not the first or the last one to scorch a pan. You did a good job recovering!
The pan may need to be boiled a little deeper to make sure you can cover any high spots.
You can now proceed with your syrup adventures and count your lucky stars that you did not burn the place down.
In hind site stop boiling when your tired or have someone with you who is wide awake.
Your next syrup will be just fine!
Regards,
Chris

[Twisted Minds]

I've been there, long days working, collecting, transporting and long nights boiling. We've all done it. That being said, my operation is open air, with a wood burning evaporator and pan large enough I always keep enough sap in that can't get away form me just in case I do doze off, fire will go out before pan boils off. To be operating with an open flame propane burner in an enclosed building, attached to the house, you're lucky it didn't catch fire boiling over. We've all seen the videos off dropping turkeys into fryer too quickly and instant inferno. I'd be more concerned with flame going out and building filling with gas and . . . . well a scorched pan would be least of your worries. Never leave a gas flame unattended.

[Sugarbush Ridge]

Stainless steel ,,, or an iron pan????? To polish it up, blue scotch-brite and then go to a janitor supply store and get the 'white' floor polishing pads to get the scratches polished down. You can get the 'white' in squares.

[buckeye gold]

yup you are official now. Run your sap deeper and move on as a pro. There are those who have burnt pans and those who are going to, those are the only two categories in syrup making.

[mainebackswoodssyrup]

Yup, you’re the real deal now. Run it a little deeper as others have suggested and keep an eye on it. It will probably still make good syrup. What seems like a disaster will make a great story down the road. Chalk it up as a lesson learned and another memory made

[Z/MAN]

We have all learned the hard way to never leave that pan unattended. My lesson was on my first ever boil and I wanted to cry. If you ever have it happen again, to prevent scratching the pan, pound a piece of copper tubing flat on one end and use that to scrape the pan. Copper is softer than stainless and will not scratch your pan.

[LMP Maple]

I am sorry to hear this and as the others have said be thankful that the house is still standing and your family is safe as all else can be fixed/replaced. As a motorcycle rider told me years ago its not a matter of if you go down on your bike its when, likely from a car driver making a mistake. The same holds true for scorching your pans, its a matter of when not if.
The first thing I would tell you is try not to dwell on it too much. It sucks for sure but it happened and you have moved on. The next thing I would tell you is invest, and its a small investment, in an r/o for next year. This will take those marathon boils down to 3-4 hour affairs and improve everyone's life by leaps and bounds. I had a marathon boil on my first night until 1:30 am. I took the sugar up to 4% but had I taken it to 6 I would have been done at 11:30 or earlier.
I would also say thank you for sharing this as it can be hard to post something like this. Getting this information out to everyone is very important as we all can learn from this from the person starting out to the seasoned veteran.

[82cabby]

Sorry man. I’ve scorched a pan as well. Ruined a whole weekend’s worth of boiling. I feel for ya.

[BCPP]

I've been there, long days working, collecting, transporting and long nights boiling. We've all done it. That being said, my operation is open air, with a wood burning evaporator and pan large enough I always keep enough sap in that can't get away form me just in case I do doze off, fire will go out before pan boils off. To be operating with an open flame propane burner in an enclosed building, attached to the house, you're lucky it didn't catch fire boiling over. We've all seen the videos off dropping turkeys into fryer too quickly and instant inferno. I'd be more concerned with flame going out and building filling with gas and . . . . well a scorched pan would be least of your worries. Never leave a gas flame unattended.

Sorry to disagree, little to no chance of the boil over catching fire. Sugar is not anywhere near as flammable as oil! When it boils over it returns to a solid as soon as heat is removed. The stuff that keeps getting heated will smoke a lot, smell awful and leave behind the carbonized mess that he found.