homemade maple sugar evaporator with pics

[markct]

i wanted to make a little maple sugar this coming spring but didnt need anything too big, just a touch bigger than the way we did it when i was a kid, a campstove and a pan, so i set out to make a small wood fired evaporator for next to nothing using stuff i had around, the body of it is a propane tank that i plasma cut so that i could open the top and bend the pieces up to get more height, and then made a door on the front and added a thimble of 6 inch well pipe to the back for the stovepipe. for the stainless pan i took the door off of an old restraunt type refrigerator and flattened out the sheet then laid it out and cut it with a the angle grinder and a zip wheel. i then clamped it down to a length of heavy channel iron and with a deadblow hammer worked back and forth and formed the bends, then welded the corners with my mig welder and stainless wire

 

[markct]

and here is one more view with the pan taken off. its not a big evaporator by any means but it was all outa free materials and definatly should be much more productive than the campstove method. the pan has a capacity of just under 12 gallons and has no baffles since i will just use it as a batch evaporator

 

[MrJimi]

LOL, do you ship to Florida?
Jim

 

[MikeD74T]

markct, To increase the firing capacity get a discarded oil burner and gut the electrodes, transformer, fire eye, oil lines, nozzle, etc., leaving just the housing & fan. Weld a tube onto the stove door to receive the blower. It'll better than double the boiling rate. Put in a cord switch to shut it off when adding wood. Adjust the shutter to best airflow. MikeD74T

 

[bjcsc]

Looks good. All you need now is to finish up the mash tank and condenser...

 

[markct]

mash tank and condenser????? never heard of these things in reference to maple sugaring, maybe i have just heard them as different terms could you explain more. im open to suggestions here! i still have to make the small preheater pan to feed the syrup into before its fed into the big pan as this is supposed to help with the efficiency i hear

 

[Erik_in_Hoyt]

he's not talking about using it to make sugar...
he's referring to a, um, fuel making setup - yeah, that's the ticket! fuel...

 

[SPIKER]

hehehe just need to add the sour mash heh

I made a similar pan last spring/winter, used SS sheet 48X44" 14ga to make the pan, bent 2 sides ~8" deep with a 1" back bend so ended up with 44" X 34" x 6" deep. works good over a wood fire with cinder blocks built 2 or 3 high. stacked bottom one or two on each side so air gets in fast, built blocks so pan is on top covering open area and has small edge of heat to escape up along the long sides ~1/2" or less on each side this way & has a 1" full port ball valve. I tilt the pan to empty it into 5 gal bucket through the pre-filters then finish the batch on camp stove on a 2nd home built SS pan. I built the smaller pan to fit on top of the 2 burner camp stove and I use foil to wrap around the stove legs and hold heat into the pan with the alum foil simply bent over the edge of the pan. I can get ~40 gallons into the big pan and ~5 gal into the small pan. i drain from small pan into pre-filter and then final clarifying filter and into jars where I re-eat it to boil on the stove in a double boiler and pull them out cap them and seal them only after cooling slightly. screw tops on snug and turn them upside down onto cool counter. I'm almost out from last years batches, (made about 3 gallons is all) and gave away some to guys how got me pan #1 and for the material I made pan #2 with my old boss. will give him some more this year probably. took maybe a rick of wood total and 4 or 5 days of sap harvesting... worst was getting the sap up top from the bottom land for bottling. thinking maybe I should build a new fire pit down near the trees this year and do main cooking down there and then only have to hall the mostly syrup up to the house.?

mark M

 

[Jerome]

Markct you may want to check out this forum.
MapleTrader.com - Powered by vBulletin
you know once you start making maple syrup you just can't stop.

 

[Erik_in_Hoyt]

the one year I made syrup, we just put the sap in a big roaster and let it simmer 24/7 adding more sap every day until it was thick enough and we were out of raw sap.

was tasty and made the house smell good, but not certain the final product was worth all the effort we spent keeping pet hair out of it...

 

[PineRidge]

McGyver would be proud of you.

 

[tnhomestead]

wonder if i have enough trees and big enough to make maple syrup -- and can u make it in tn?

 

[markct]

heres a few more pics of it now installed in my sugarshack i built for it, funny how these projects escalate! i will get some better pics of the shack in the daylight, it was nightime so the one pic is kinda dark. the shack is 7ft by 11ft inside.

 

[SPIKER]

looks like a nice shack! I am thinking of moving my big pan down to the creek/woods but without a shack that means not being able to duck inside to warm up as it is now I HAUL the sap in 5 gal pails up to the house the large wood fired pan sets outside on a cement block burn pit, it is about 2.5 blocks high. (one solid 4" blocks on the very top with a few of the blocks turned so split wood can be slid into the fire under the pan through the block openings. this is also fire breathing room. I have also pulled 1~2 blocks from one side (upwind side) to load wood under it. I didn't notice the wood loading on you're propane tank ? is there a door to load wood into it??

anyhow looks like maybe I won't do too much syrup this year. only enough to keep ME in the sticky stuff

mark

 

[greenthumb]

Markct,

I am so sorry to hear about your "illness". We started about 8 years ago with wanting to make a "little bit of syrup" using an old flat pan we got from my wife's grandparents hobby at their cottage. So far I can't tell you what this illness has cost me and how it has grown. We started with about 15 taps went to about 40 the next year the same spring we had twins (not a good idea to mix new twins and maple sugering we did not do well that year. I think we pulled the taps in about may that year) We make anywhere form 12-20 gallons of syrup each year depending on how mother nature helps out last year was our worst year ever in Michigan.

So far our hobby has only cost us a new sugar shack, small evaporator which we have outgrown, 80 taps, storage tanks, sap buckets, bottles, not sleeping many nights. (remember it only takes around 40 gallons of boiled down sap to make 1 gallon of pure syrup). But man what a fun spring time hobby. We sell a little bit each year to friends and neighbors to get a little out of it but what a fun way to spend time with the kids as you can see the fun we have We have four daughters ages 9, 6,6, and 3 and I can't think of a better way to spend a day than outside in the spring collecting boiling and just doing something not many people have the patient痴 for anymore. Their is not a fast instant way when it comes to maple syrup. I have a lot of friends who ask if the syrup comes out of the tree and are shocked when I give them the syrup lesson. It is a great hobby and also another excuse to get on the tractor of course. We have a blast with it every year. You can see some our pics of our fun hobby.

 

[markct]

there is a door on the front like a woodstove that is for loading the fire, theres a air damper in the door and also a pipe with holes in it that runs about halfway back the firebox to feed air to the fire also, thats what the second small air damper is below the door

 

[WayneB]

Yep the price of syrup just went up!

Way back when we were making our own I figured we were staying under $100 a gallon, but would make it up in volume! Never made enough to get the price down and as luck would have it I was diagnosed with diabetes and we stopped making maple syrup. We never had amber syrup, but the dark stuff tasted good too.

 

[SPIKER]

greenthumb, those are some great posts I need an ATV with the tank on back as I've just been lugging 5 gallon buckets back from the woods it seems that when it is running the ground is so wet that I can't take the tractor back there without terrible rutting... Since I walk the farm all the time I want to keep that to a min. as it is I stumble enough

mark M

 

[markct]

well i did a few more little things to the evaporator like adding two baffles to the pan like the real evaporators have. i fired it up to try it for the first time yesterday, filled the pan with water and got a fire going, it worked pretty good but the one thing i noticed was the rear of the pan always had more boiling than the front, and the fire was mostly build at the front, it seemed better with the draft cut back but seemed that whatever i did the back would boil like crazy and the front just barely. any thoughts, i was thinking maybe its not as bad as i think since the back is where the fresh cold sap will be added so maybe that sorta counteracts this? or is there other tricks that i dont know?

 

[greenthumb]

MarkCt

My evaporator has fire brick across the back about 4-6 inches from the flu with about three inch clearance to the bottom of the pan. This seems to "slow the heat down" as it vents to the stack. Also if you can line the stove with fire brick that will hold the heat in a little more evenly thus you may see a little more even boil