Plan for 2025 season and beyond

[Z/MAN]

You have been misinformed. A RO system is not a lot of work. It is the easiest and best thing you can add to your setup. I admit it sounds complicated, but it is simple and the best thing you could add to your setup!

[DRoseum]

You have been misinformed. A RO system is not a lot of work. It is the easiest and best thing you can add to your setup. I admit it sounds complicated, but it is simple and the best thing you could add to your setup!

Cannot agree more! Building or buying a RO is by far the best investment you can make! They are simple to build, operate and maintain ...and will save you an unbelievable amount of time and fuel!

[maple flats]

Unless I missed it, you need to learn how to develope a gradient. Start with about 1.5-2" deep in the pan. As it boils down, very slowly add more sap or if you have an RO, more concentrate, to maintain depth. Keep as steady of adding flow as possible. Maintain the depth, but add very slowly so as not to get mixing from surging into the pan, a steady drip or very slow flow, to just make up for what has boiled out.. Add always at the opposite end from where you will be drawing off.
Then read the temperature near the draw off, in the pan, not in the draw off box or port. When you get to 219 open the valve to a very slow trickle. If the temperature raises more open a little more. Ideal is if you can draw at a steady flow while maintaining temperature but in reality a rather small pan will not be able to keep it going, but try.
On my first 2x6 I did a constant draw and at a very small flow was able to keep it going from about 10-15 minutes on the early tries up to a few of 30-40 minutes before I lost the temperature, but keep trying.
If you do this you will develope a gradient. It's easiest if you get a preheating pan to rest on top of the boiling pan with a small valve and a SS tube to drain into the boiling pan as far from the drawoff as possible. As the sap boils it gets thicker and is pushed towards the drawoff. Thus a gradient in density.
Then after you draw off, test it using a Hydrometer (with a Murphy cup if possible) . It will most likely be close but still need more boiling. Do that as a batch, in a SS pot. Either on a turkey frier or if necessary in the house but do not boil in aluminum. Walmart, big lots and others offer low cost SS pots.
When the density tests good, bottle it after filtering it. Bottle at 185+/- 2 degrees F. once bottled, lay it on it;s side for 30 seconds as soon as you cap it. Then you can stand the bottle or jug upright.

[ProBoot]

Thanks everyone, even now I'm struggling to comprehend the how to proceed.
I'd love lots of upgrades, but currently only have a 300gal milk tank as short term storage and nothing in the woods other than buckets for storage

I planned on running lines into those Water Totes, in 2-3 locations on my property. I have a natural slope of about 50ft over the property and feel this would be good for gravity feed. I'd still need a process to move the sap from below to the 300gal tank in my sugar shack.

I may build an RO, can I run the RO system to just dump the concentrate BACK into the tank it's hauling from? or will that be a nono? It would save me buying another tank of some sort to hold the concentrate etc.

Estimate 100 taps on lines, with 50 buckets in a less than friendly line area for a total of 150 taps this season, over my 48 last season.
End results My goal would be about 80l of quality syrup and maybe 10 liters of cooking product(ie the pan left overs that is not ideal for pancakes)

Thoughts on if that is reasonable? I figure using existing stuff with some updates would work this pretty well. I'd like to brick my oil tank a bit more and maybe even add some forced air via some form of quiet fan.

[DRoseum]

Yep you can recirculate back into the main tank. Might not be the most preferred (due to putting concentrated bacteria back into your main sap), but definitely done by lots of people and ok if that's what works best for you. Alternatively you could run concentrate into 5 gallon buckets amd dump into your evaporator, not being sure how you plan to feed into your pan.

[Pdiamond]

What are you planning to do with your permeate?

[ProBoot]

I guess I could run the system into 55 gal drums before boiling, my system only boils at about 10-15 GPH I think, so it's going to be a long boil. I can plumb in my main tank to feed my evaporator but currently I was feeding it via 5gal buckets into 2x 4" warming pans before dumping that into the main pans to boil. I think last year my first batch I got about 10l of syrup from about 300l of sap which was running about 4-4.5% sugar content. The sap was collected over a week on 48 taps(yeah I had 50 taps in and 2 produced no sap at all, turns out I tapped non maples haha)

As for the permeate, if it's pure water, I can just drain it out the door of the sugar shack, or possibly store it in 55 gallon drums for cleaning purposes, although my shack isn't heated other than the evaporator running so frozen water would be hard to use for cleaning. But honestly I didn't clean things between batches last year....just left the bottom layer of sap/syrup in there and flooded the pan with fresh sap when boil time came.

[DRoseum]

You will need to keep the permeate to do a RO system flush after each RO use (and end of season cleaning and flush).

[ProBoot]

I could save it, but my shack is 30' from my house and I use a exterior hose for cleaning things up mainly run off my house water. I have full power/water in the sugar shack now.

[DRoseum]

Permeate works far better than well or tap water to flush membranes. The lack or minerals and bacteria in permeate help strip residual sugar molecules off membranes and keep things more sanitary. If treated tap water, you may need to use an acti e carbon block filter to remove chlorine and prevent membrane damage.