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After Sugaring

Quality Begins for the Next Season

It is recommended that all equipment be cleaned as soon as possible at the close of the maple season.

Evaporators
Some producers allow sap to ferment in English tin or stainless steel pans. If this method is used, watch the fermenting action carefully. When scale loosens, scrub with a nylon pad . If fermenting sap is left in pans too long, serious damage may result. Rinse with clear water, and dry.

If chemical cleansers are used, be sure to rinse thoroughly to prevent possible damage to the pan, and off-flavors next season.

Materials which collect on the underside of the evaporator during the season are generally corrosive to metal; if corrosive deposits are permitted to remain until the next season, holes may result in the bottom of the front pan, or in the flues. In order to avoid damage, clean the underside of the front pan and use a brush to clean the flues. Special flue brushes may be purchased from maple equipment suppliers.

Paint
If sap tanks or other equipment needs to be painted, use a non-toxic epoxy paint; paint meeting these standards is available from a maple equipment dealer. Painting at the close of the season, as opposed to the beginning of a new season, allows time for odors to dissipate, reducing the possibility of off-flavored syrup.

Storage
Store all equipment where it will remain dry, lessening the potential of rust.

Gathering Equipment
There are many different ways sugarmakers have developed to clean tubing. The following are probably the most common:

1. To do the best job, laterals should be rolled up and tied in bundles, taken down to the sugarhouse for cleaning and then stored under cover. Before doing this, number the system so it can be rehung the next year. This is best done by painting numbers or letters on trees and putting a tag with a corresponding number or letter on the tubing. You don't have to number each tree - usually every fifth or sixth one is adequate. There are countless variations of identification systems, but the important thing is that the laterals go up in the same place next year. Once the laterals are numbered, roll them up into bundles of about 25 taps. Take each bundle to a tank filled with cleaning solution and fill the bundle with solution. This can be done by pumping solution into the bundle or mounting the bundle on a rack that rotates the bundle through the solution. Let the bundles sit in the sun for one or two days and flush them with clean water. As an added precaution, some sugarmakers let the first sap run through the lines onto the ground. The same procedure works well for cleaning main lines. The rinse step is particularly important in preventing off-flavors.

2. Many sugarmakers are leaving their tubing up in the woods year round and cleaning it in place. They usually do this by hooking up a vacuum pump to the lower end of the line, going to the top with a bucket of cleaning solution, pulling a spout, placing it in the bucket so solution is sucked through the tubing, then capping the spout and moving to the next.

3. Some tubing manufacturers are now making fittings that are tight under positive pressure as well as vacuum. With this type of fitting, the cleaning solution can be pumped from the lower end of the line back up the system.

4.  Maple equipment suppliers now have available commercial pipeline cleaning equipment, consisting of a portable compressor pump which injects air with the cleaning solution, thus increasing the turbulence in the tubing, and improving the cleaning action. Some producers have purchased these in conjunction with one or more other sugarmakers to share the expense.

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