Into the woods by 8:00 AM to empty the evaporator and finishing cooking. We did well on the end of day cook yesterday. About 17 gallons of sap left to cook down.
Cleaned the syrup pan. Emptied all the sap. Took off and rinsed the large flue pan. Replaced it on the evaporator then filled it with water. Added cleaning solution when the water was boiling. Started the fire by 11:00 AM to cook down the remaining 17 gallons.
It takes time to cook down the remaining sap because only the front syrup pan is used and we add 2-3 gallons of sap at a time instead of trickling the sap into the evaporator. The syrup gets darker because it’s on the fire longer and under goes temperature swings from boiling at 212 back down to 80-100 when we add sap, then re-heated to boiling.
Took the syrup off at 3:40 PM when it was 53 Brix.
We switched from the Baume scale to the Brix scale this season. The hydrometer has both scales. The red line indicating syrup is done is in the same place on both scales. It’s just different units. Think of a ruler that has inches on one side and centimeters on the other. 6 inches is 15 centimeters. The absolute distance between points is the same; it’s just a different scale.
Brix is widely used in the maple industry. The Baume scale was traditionally used in the Mid-West while other areas of maple belt used Brix. Both scales measure dissolved solids in a liquid, but Brix scale is based on dissolved sugar in a liquid. Baume is based on the measure of dissolved salt in a liquid. Baume can measure dissolved sugar, but the scale is based on dissolved salt. Since we are interested in sugar, Brix is a better scale to use. We measure sap sweetness in Brix and use Brix for R/O measurements. Now we have a consistent scale for all measurements.
Practically, the switch means we now take syrup off the evaporator at 53 Brix instead of 29 Baume. And hot syrup is finished at 59 Brix instead of 32 Baume. Cold test syrup should be 66-67 Brix.
Upper 30s with drizzle most of the day. Rain/sleet/snow moves in overnight.
Back to the farmhouse by 4:15 PM.