Ice in sap collection barrel

[Springfield Acer]

I experimented with this last year by pulling the ice which was around two inches thick in my buckets over top of the remaining two to six inches of unfrozen sap and saving both.
The unfrozen sap was high in sugar. If I remember correctly, it was about 4 or 5% compared to my normal 1.6% and boiled down nicely to a light color.
The ice was then melted and the sap that it made did not register on my hydrometer which is not very accurate at that low of a content.
I proceeded to boil it down to almost nothing and got nothing.
Before that, I saved the ice and boiled it all. Now I throw it all away since I have an insulated milk tank in the shade and I do not let my sap sit for very long.
Like the previous poster said, there has to come a point when too much freezing starts capturing sugar and then discarding the ice would be throwing away syrup.

[Jmsmithy]

Yes S.Acer

That's my thought. As I've been hearing/reading (and again I'm new to this, this being my 3rd season sugaring) it does appear that, at least to a point, freezing sap, and skimming off/discarding of that ice would have a RO effect. I certainly don't know enough to make a statement, or for that matter actually experiment with my own sap as I simply don't have enough (skills, sap or equipment) to part with the amount needed to come to any real answer. I haven't grown yet to the point where I have the sap volume (or quite frankly the $$) to invest in RO equipment nor am I advocating a freezer can replace the equipment but I am intrigued by the potential answer...

Does anyone know if this has ever been truly studied/tested?

Has there ever been a published opinion/finding by Cornell, Proctor/UVM or Dr. Tim? I'm truly fascinated at the prospect.

The more I learn, I'm noticing, the more questions I have

[sugarwoodacres]

The old timers here say the frozen stuff is low sugar . I believe I read somewhere that years ago they would toss the ice and only boil unfrozen . Interesting topic . 4% is a nice #

[happy thoughts]

Search past threads in this forum because this comes up a couple of times each season. Here's a start....

In this thread Dr Tim mentions some past research

http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...Ice-in-Buckets

The graph I mentioned earlier appeared as a link in this thread...

http://mapletrader.com/community/sho...ce-away-or-not

.... but the link posted by RileySugarBush no longer works. I found something similar at the same site where they discuss the science of crystal formation in sugar solution:

http://www.uoguelph.ca/foodscience/d...cess/process-c

hope something in there helps

[Big_Eddy]

My son studied this at University. Short Story - if the sap remains -5c or warmer, no sugar will be collected in the ice. Once the sap goes down to about -9c, some of the sugar will be trapped in the ice as it forms. I have the chart somewhere.

I dump ice unless I need it to keep my sap tank cold for a day or too.

[slammer3364]

From what I have learned on this site I ditch ice also

[seclark]

As others have said,toss it.I only keep the ice and put it in my storage tank when the weather starts to warm up some to keep the sap colder.As mentioned it is the poor mans ro.

[daniel_wentworth]

Thanks to everyone........I guess it's ditch the ice! Good luck to all!

[smokeyamber]

my vote is to skim the ice on the top off if it's in the buckets... the slow freeze seems to seperate the water better. On my barrels I leave the ice to the very end as a cooling device. It really saved me last season when we had 80 deg temps, that and a north side snowbank worked great. Small producers like me also don't have alot of excess sap each season so boiling a little longer is no big deal.