My plan 2022/23

[Swingpure]

If its bubbling up like crazy and defoamer wont touch it, then its a build up of niter and you need to drain and clean your pan. I avoided doing cleaning for too long and ended up caking on an 1/16" layer of niter that was starting to burn in spots and was a pain to clean. Never happened to me before but we had a lot of niter this year.

I cannot thank you enough for your prompt advice. I did shut it down as soon as I read your first post. All four channels had nitre buildup, but the fourth channel had a lot of nitre buildup and that is why that one was foaming up as you suggested. I was going to take a picture of how bad it was, but decided some embarrassing things you do not show. Fortunately there was no scorching.

I was able to get it all 99% clean. I will work on 100% clean after the season ends on Monday.

Next year I will have to get ahead of it and have a routine schedule for cleaning the pan. Today I had to undo a number of things because I stopped mid boil. I lot of extra moving of firewood and sap, that would not have happened if I had cleaned it on an off day.

I still have three boils left as I still had a lot of sap unboiled today, that I will boil tomorrow. I have to leave time to collect for Saturday’s boil.

Two interesting things from today:

I cleaned the bottom of the pan as well. I had my buddy helping me and we first rubbed the bottom of the pan on the snow. It removed about 80% of the carbon. The power washer got 99% of the rest.

I had to steal from my wood supply that was meant for next season’s boil. The wood had one year of seasoning, but I try to have two, but I am using it a year early. I also realized that I did not split it quite as fine as I did this year’s supply.

The combination of not being seasoned as much and being slightly larger, meant it burnt slower. Now my boil was not as hot and the boil rate was a little slower, but not a hec of lot less. I had no rocket roar and I used a he of a lot less wood.My fire interval I changed from 10 minutes to 13 minutes as a result of the slower burning. It sure was more of a leisurely pace.

I did have a draw off before the nitre problem and made 8 L of syrup.