The season is over, and it’s time to pull your taps, and clean and store your DIY maple syrup equipment. Here are some tips!
After you are finished making maple syrup for the year, it is time to clean and store your DIY maple syrup equipment. Remember, when cleaning DIY maple syrup eqipment, do not use abrasives, detergents or harsh chemicals.
Remove and Clean Taps and Buckets
First, remove your taps from your trees so that the trees can heal between sugaring seasons. This is important! To remove taps, gently tap with a hammer from a few different directions. Then, gently wriggle the tap out of the tree. Or, if you have a Tapping Hammer with Spile Remover, use the blunt end to gently tap each side of your spile and the reverse end of the head to gently extract taps from your trees.
You can easily clean your taps for storage by agitating them in a bucket of clean water and setting them on a dishtowel to dry. If your taps are particularly gunky, try boiling them in water for 15 minutes before rinsing and drying. Sap buckets and lids can simply be rinsed and stacked to dry as well.
Clean Your Sugaring Pan
Cleaning your sugaring pan takes a bit more work. Your pan is likely to have cook marks ranging from brown to black. This is burned-on sugar and mineral deposits. To remove these cook marks and deposits, fill your pan with a weak baking soda water solution (3 tablespoons of soda per 5 gallons of water) so that all the cooked-on bits are covered. Then, boil the solution in the pan for 30 minutes and leave it to cool for several hours or overnight. The cook marks should wipe or flake off easily with a soft rag.
If they do not, or for a deeper clean, we recommend a Pan Cleaner. When using pan cleaner, wear gloves to protect your hands, and eye protection to protect your eyes. Use only in a well-ventilated space.
To use the pan cleaner, dilute with warm water using 1 ounce of cleaner for every 160 ounces of water. This is equivalent to 2 tablespoons of pan cleaner for every 1.25 gallons (or 1 gallon plus 1 quart) of water.
Make enough solution so that when you pour the solution into your pan it covers all the dirty bits. Depending on the severity of the mess, you can leave the solution in the pan for a few days or up to a week. For best results, agitate by stirring occasionally.
When you are ready, remove the pan cleaning solution from your pan and rinse thoroughly to neutralize the acid that’s just been sitting in your pan. You may do this with clean water and/or with a diluted baking soda solution of 1 tablespoon of baking soda per 5 gallons of water.
You may wipe your pan with a soft cloth but NEVER use anything abrasive on your pan.
Let your pan dry thoroughly and store in a dry place.
Do NOT leave the cleaning solution in your pan for longer than recommended or use a higher than recommended concentration of the solution, and DO NOT fail to properly neutralize your pan after cleaning, or, over time, you may damage your pan.
Clean and Dry Your Filters
Whether you have 1 quart or 8 quart cone filters, they are washable and reusable between uses and even seasons.
Rinse, ring and hang your filters to dry. For tenacious gunk, boil your filters for 15 minutes and let them cool before wringing and hangingn to dry. Remember: do not use anything other than water to clean your filters, including detergents of any kind!
If you use prefilters as well as filters, consider discarding them after the season and purchasing 1 quart or 8 quart replacements for the next year. While they are technically reusable, prefilters will degrade over time and are actually considered to be disposable by the maple industry itself.
Store your DIY maple syrup equipment in a dry place. A barn or garage will work. But make sure your filters are safe from mice and other critters.
When sugaring season is over, and you have cleaned and stored your DIY maple syrup equipment, spring is on its way!
After sugaring season comes blue skies and the green of spring!