Sugar shack addition

[Big_Eddy]

It's syrup season so I've been spending much of my time out in the sugar shack watching water boil as my wife calls it. Problem is that I need to add wood every 7-8 minutes and the syrup can go from a rolling boil to a seething froth of bubbles in seconds. So I don't venture far.

Needed something to do so I took the tin snips and a ball bein hammer with me this morning. A scrap of stainless, a big stump and a piece of half inch plate made an anvil. Add some scrounged guts and voila.





One less excuse for being late for dinner

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[nctox]

I like it!

[brucew]

I like it too. Wish I could think up stuff like that.
Good job

[Shade Tree Welder]

Isn't suppose to be painted red?

That is cool.

Hey how about some pictures of the good stuff!!! Real Maple Syrup!!!

[Big_Eddy]

Starting point. 40 gals sap makes 1 gal syrup





Making Steam. Lots of wood needed. I can boil up to 20 gals an hour and use a cord of wood for every 3-400 gals.





Getting close to ready in the front pan





Filtered and bottled.


We tap about 150 trees a year and make 25 to 30 gals. Not big, but enough work to keep me out of trouble for a few weeks each spring.

My evaporator and pans are all home made. A topic for another thread some day.

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[Lew Hartswick]

Was about to post a question if the industry had ever tried using the equipment
known as a (sp?) Lyathalizer. (something I picked up while working in the Bio-
chem area. But since I couldn't spell it just googled "vacuum evaporation" and
Lo and Behold it has been, at least by some as it shows up as a method to
concentrate sap to syrup. So why mess with the wood fired-hard to control
heat method???
...lew...

[cutter]

Originally Posted by Big_Eddy

Filtered and bottled.

Eddy, do you ship to the US and do you take PayPal?

[Big_Eddy]

Vacuum is used by pipeline operations to increase the yield from each tree and to pull sap to the sugar house. I'm old school and use buckets and collect by hand.

Reverse osmosis is used by larger operators to remove up to half the water but boiling is needed to make syrup. There are chemical changes that occur during the heating that create the maple flavor.

A vacuum swirl evaporator as is used for milk powder and similar powdered formulas would result in a tasteless powdered sugar. Plus they are mega expensive.

The university of Vermont has a maple research centre and has tried a number of different approaches.

Current best practice (max profitability) is vacuum pipeline with RO followed by evaporation. Evaporators have a steam hood and preheat coil, a divided rear flue pan and a divided front syrup pan

The flue pan is built with 6 or more 1" wide by 6-8" deep "fins" that drop into the flame path to increase surface area significantly. It's divided into 2 or more sections so sap has to follow a path from inlet to outlet. The sap then exits the flue pan and enters the syrup pan which is also divided into sections. the level of the whole rig is controlled by a float box at the inlet.

Once the evaporator has been "sweetened" there is raw sap entering at the back and finished syrup coming out the front with the excess water evaporating all along the serpentine path the sap takes from inlet to outlet.

Of course there is 40x as much sap going in the back as syrup comes out the front. The rest goes up in steam.

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