From the inside of a sap tank



Ever wondered what it's like to be inside a sap tank?  

 

Today, Kern was the lucky one picked to squeeze his way down into the 1,000 gallon sap tank, used to hold the water that exits the reverse osmosis machine.  For many years, it's been a task-and-a-half to clean all our plastic sap tanks, especially the smaller ones- wriggling down inside, dragging the hose in after you, scrubbing, and coming out sopping wet.  For someone that is even semi-claustrophobic, this is definitely not a pleasant job.  The only opening in these types of tanks are about a foot & a half in diameter, so when you're inside the tank, this opening seems mighty small and one might find themselves wanting a little more air!   Fortunately for Kern, today he was just checking to make sure everything was in perfect working order, as we are selling this big tank and replacing it with a brand new, shiny stainless steel one.

What happens to all that water?

Maple sap is comprised of sugar and water.  Each day we test the sugar content of the sap with a hydrometer because the amount of sugar in the sap varies from day to day.  Sap consists of mostly water (ex: 98%), and a small amount of sugar (ex: 2%).

In our sugaring operation, we use a reverse osmosis machine (R.O.) to remove approximately 90% of the water out of the sap.  So, for every 1,000 gallons of sap we collect, we end up with about 100 gallons of concentrated sap.

The use of a R.O. allows us to boil for less time, thus saving energy.   If we didn't use a R.O., we would be boiling all night long, every single day!
  

Reverse osmosis machine

 

So, you may wonder: what happens to all that water that comes out of the sap?  Usually, if you didn't employ a R.O., all the water would evaporate into the air.  But, since the R.O. directly removes the water out of the sap, we have a large tank that the water flows into after exiting the reverse osmosis machine.  From there, we not only reuse the water to clean the R.O., but to clean our syrup pans as well.

When it gets to a certain point in the season, we must clean our pans from the evaporator every day.  The sugar sand accumulates and a thick coating of it is left on the bottom.  If we didn't clean them thoroughly, they would burn during the boiling process and the syrup would not taste good.  We reuse the crystal clear water from the R.O. to clean these pans, saving a lot of water!

 

A sugar sand coated syrup pan

  

Water from R.O. makes it's way through each section

Almost done!

 

Clean syrup pan