We focused on our finishing and bottling process to improve it.  Three changes:  new propane burners, new fill spout, new bottle caps.  It paid off.

The propane burners under the finishing pan were old.  Likely from the 40s or 50s.  It would take 2 ½ hours to finish a milk can of syrup.  We replaced the 3 burner with a new 3 burner.   Each burner is rated at 15,000 BTU per hour.  We’ll never get 100% efficiency out of it but we were hoping for an improvement in cooking time, possibility saving of 50% of the time.  Today we finished a milk can of syrup in 1 hr 15 min.  These burners give a nice rolling boil.  We were lucky to get a moderate boil on two burners with a weak boil on the third.  One of the cast iron burners cracked several years ago and was held together with wire.  It was past time to replace it.  New burners should make finishing less time consuming.

In the bottling kitchen we replaced the old stove with a new 2 burner.  Freed up a lot of space making it  easier to access the bottling pan for emptying in a milk can of syrup.

We replaced the fill spout on the bottling pan.  No More Bubbles! We had used a coffer pot fill spout with a long tube that almost reached the bottom of the bottles.  We had bubbles when we filled bottles.  Our theory was the long tube caused turbulence and that caused bubbles.  The new fill spout is short: maybe an inch.  And when turned off, its off.  The coffee pot spout was prone to keep running as the long tube drained.  After a little experimenting, we found that tipping the bottle about 30 degrees so the  fill stream ran against the side of bottle allowed us to fill at good speed without bubbles.  We are thrilled with eliminating bubbles.  Bubbles didn’t hurt the syrup, but they didn’t look nice on top of finished syrup.

Finally, new no drip caps on the bottles. The caps are plastic with an tear drop shaped lip.  They won’t stop all drips, but most drips are arrested making pouring syrup from the bottle more pleasant.  Otherwise syrup would accumulate on the screw top causing even more drips and fouling the threads of  screw top.

5 overnight.  35 and sunny.  But it takes a long time to warm when its 5.  Sap moved in the trees but we didn’t get much dripping.

Into the woods by 9:00 AM.  Back to the farmhouse by 6:30 PM.  Finished and bottled three batches of syrup: 17 gallons, 1 qt total.