Creek Cooling bulk sap storage

[rmcguirect]

This years weather proved to be tough on my operation and I lost a lot of my sap to spoilage from warm weather. I'm only able to boil on the weekends. In the past I've stored my 5 gallon buckets of sap in a snow bank but this year we had no snow and I was using a sureflo pump with an IBC tote for storage for the first time.

This is leading me to try to figure out some way of cooling my storage tank. I have a creek on my property and my idea is to run a recirculating line through a coil in the creek. I figure on most days I can just run the recirculation line of the sureflo pump through the coil but on warmer days I may want a dedicated pump so I can keep up with the warmer weather and prevent the sap from heating up.

Has anyone done anything like this with any success?

[Trends]

This years weather proved to be tough on my operation and I lost a lot of my sap to spoilage from warm weather. I'm only able to boil on the weekends. In the past I've stored my 5 gallon buckets of sap in a snow bank but this year we had no snow and I was using a sureflo pump with an IBC tote for storage for the first time.

This is leading me to try to figure out some way of cooling my storage tank. I have a creek on my property and my idea is to run a recirculating line through a coil in the creek. I figure on most days I can just run the recirculation line of the sureflo pump through the coil but on warmer days I may want a dedicated pump so I can keep up with the warmer weather and prevent the sap from heating up.

Has anyone done anything like this with any success?

That's thinking outside of the box!
I don't have any experience but my thought would be to put the coil inside the tote and pump the creek water.
I'd be concerned that the line friction pumping the sap (basically a closed loop) may elevated the sap temp on it's own. Or maybe just put the tote in the creek.
Just a slow day and my minds wandering.

Good luck

[rmcguirect]

That's thinking outside of the box!
I don't have any experience but my thought would be to put the coil inside the tote and pump the creek water.
I'd be concerned that the line friction pumping the sap (basically a closed loop) may elevated the sap temp on it's own. Or maybe just put the tote in the creek.
Just a slow day and my minds wandering.

Good luck

Pumping creek water into a coil in the tank was my first thought as well. I'm leaning towards running the sap through a coil in the creek mainly because it's a much simpler solution.
I may try to do some feasibility testing in the coming weeks before the creek temp starts to rise. If I can measure and log the inlet and outlet temperature of the sap going through the coil as well as the creek and air temperature I should be able to see if there is any merit to this.

[Brien]

your could buy(make) a beer wort cooler to put in the tote, to cool down the sap.

[nhdog]

i'm sure many of you don't remember the ''old days'' i mean the real old days, but before we had electricity we kept our milk cans set right in the brook to keep the milk cold until it was picked up. just food for thought

[Mean_Oscar]

The temp of the creek water is the tell. If you have ice / snow runoff (32 F) feeding it, fine. I tried a spring house at 50 F and it was all milky in two days.