That is what I couldn’t tell from the picture. I just thought it looked odd.
You might consider a hood to help hold heat in over the pan. You probably ran it outside and the cold air cools it. It is kind of like putting a lid on your boiling water in the kitchen. It helps keep the heat in. You need a vent on it of course, but you can get a higher evaporation rate with a hood as long as the water doesn’t drip back in. The “best” ones are fully covered, However, you can’t see, in the pans which is detrimental unless you have automatic take off.
That would probably be ideal and pressurized like a pressure cooker even more so. But I think it was like a 20% gain to cover your front pan fully without a fan, and since you are outside. you have much colder surrounding air to heat up and it also will increase condensation on the outside which might work to your advantage to get rid of the water vapor. You could put it on a pulley/lift so when you check it, you can pull it up or just access doors. but put a fitting in the side of the pan so you can put a clear tube so you can see how much is in the pan opening it up.
I remember seeing an over sized hood a few inches above the evaporator a friend of mine had when I was in high school. His dad built it and said the large hood allowed the condensation to drip off outside the pan and he wanted it just high enough he could look in. I wouldn’t have thought of that if hoods hadn’t been mentioned.
Those are pretty common, but when you fully enclose the pan with the hood ie “seal” it, you get a performance boost. I am guessing most of it is from the cross-draft being colder air, and condensing the steam so it rains in the pan. you can probably just use a simple V shaped hood with flaps. The trick is making it big enough to get your hands in the pans, since I am -assuming- he is using a hydrometer in a cup to measure sugar content and apply butter to keep the bubbles down, and you don’t want to get burnt.
I will definitely not be building a hood this year. I spent the money I’m willing to spend on this project.
I may apply a fan to blow the steam to the outside. I have this in it’s place in the shed in case it rains when I want to reduce sap.
The forecast changed again and we have cold weather coming in starting Wednesday for about a week. It will give me time to gather more wood.
I totally understand that. You have put a lot of nice work into it already. You get condensation over -everything- without one. It becomes like a steam room. It doesn’t have to be much. most of them are cheap angle iron, and thin galvanized sheet metal. maybe you can find a couple of sides from a fridge then pop rivet them actually they might have the angle iron you would need too. it is typically an inverted V with a flat top, that overhangs the pans by like 4-6" and maybe 18" tall then hung by chain from the rafters. then a hole in the top for a vent/draft pipe which usually draft up, but you probably aren’t too keen about putting a hole in your roof. You might be able to run it at an angle with like a Y pipe backwards kind of like a venturi, and put the fan on the one side so it doesn’t get wet. Or you could just use the fan to blow steam out the door. (sorry I got carried away.)
I could do it with the lift you are talking about when this is in the shed like this. As you can see, I took the window out of the door for the chimney stove pipe. Your idea may be my upgrade next year. I want to see how all this goes.
I wonder if you have alot of steam issues if a tarp could be used for a quick hood solution? I was just thinking when I read that it sounded like the poor man’s tent we made camping as kids with a tarp.
I think a tarp might work as long as it doesn’t catch fire or melt. You are just trying to redirect the steam out of the building so everything doesn’t get soaked. Although some people rather enjoy steam rooms, so I will leave it up to Bill to decide. It may not be that bad. It isn’t like you are boiling off 100+ gallons an hour.
I never thought the condensation hood through, or had researced to that degree when tapping trees years ago, (this is well beyond traditional syrup country), but I totally buy the logic of the approach, I can see how it significantly boosts efficiency.
I will cast my vote for adding a hood. Based on my work experience, i would order up a sheet of painted (white), or stainless, flashing material from a place that sells roofing and cladding, hopefully the local hardware store. Sheet metal, especially without bends, should be surprisingly cheap.
Wish I was the one so prepared for tapping, and with the freedom of time to do it.
He actually has a pretty nice hobby setup. I really like his arch design. It is essentially a finishing pan, so he isn’t boiling super fast. It might not be that much of a problem.
Speed becomes an issue for commercial operations because it is sold by colour. The grade A fancy syrup commands the highest price and it is the lightest in colour. The longer sap sits, the darker it gets, the longer it is boiled the darker it gets, then later in the season the darker it gets.
You can make up for it if you use pressure filter, instead of a gravity felt filter to get rid of the bitter minerals, but speed counts more. Sap will actually get cloudy and spoil if it sits around for too long which is one of the main problems hobbyists have. The other is they don’t filter it. Then the last issue, is they still collect the sap when the trees are budding and it is a really bitter dark syrup.
From what I can find, a hood will not make the evaporation rate any faster unless one runs tubing through the inside of it to preheat the sap before introducing it to the evaporation pan or running a fan between the hood and sap.
Basically the hoods are used to control the humidity in the building. One could use the hood outside if reducing sap in the rain.
What I found to increase the evaporation rate is heat and surface area.
The flip side Sean is commercial syrup I find tastes like crap. All sugar no flavour. There is something to be said for batching and giving it plenty of time to caramelize. The grading system is sort of like grading wine on percentage of sugar in the grapes and nothing else or whiskey on alcohol content.
Best regards, hobbyist David
Pre heating definitely helps overall system efficiency but I think that is the only real benefit from what I have been told it simply lowers the cost in wood you burn.
I really don’t know much about the process so I will ask what might be a silly question. Is continuous flow processing just the design of the pan? Or does it requires a different arch? I ask because I have been told it is the best way to control quality but I have only seen the small single pan batch evaporators. Well ok once I saw a setup where the pan had channels I am guessing it was continous flow but that was soo long ago I don’t remember anything about it.
As to the quality of large scale production I think that has more to do with the reverse osmosis filters. Sort of like pressing the water out instead of evaporation. It results in a different product all together if you ask me.
Of course there are various setups for continuous flow pans, here’s a basic design. There are channels in the bottom corner of each divider for the sap to flow in one direction.
I agree, I never quite understood grading syrup by colour. The Manitoba maple seems to produce a slightly darker syrup anyways, (or maybe that’s just my amateurism) … it does have a slightly greater sugar content too. I prefer the more caramelized syrup, especially if it picks up a bit of a smokey flavour.
Sure makes extracting sugar from sugar beets look like light work…
The weather forecast changed dramatically again for the next week. I was able to collect about 7 gallons of sap yesterday followed up with a snow storm this morning.
I packed the sap in a snow bank for when it can be reduced.
This morning the wind and snow instantly gave me a lack of motivation to work outside. Needing to make a pot a coffee I thought about the sap and decided to make a pot of coffee with it. Wow, it’s good! I could put Starbuck’s out of business. I usually drink coffee black. This has just enough sweetness, kind of like the sweet tea I had down south.
